lesson 21b

So we didn't quite get finished last time with lesson 20. We were at the last question, which was, who and what is the old man? Am I right? Yeah, I didn't bring it all up. That's okay, you can listen. So we talked a little bit about, we got about halfway through this question, we were talking about who the old man was.

The Greek word for man in that And that verse is Anthropos, which means man. And you'll see some of your versions use the word self, old self. I personally don't like the word self. I think it's man, because it's an entire man. And it's generic. It means your old man, which is used here referring to individual man or woman.

There are two words in this phrase that mean old. One means to old in the point of time. The other one means old in the point of use. This word means old in the point of use. It means to be worn out or useless, fit to be put in a scrap pile kind of thing, so old man.

The Boneyard. This man is totally depraved, unregenerate, lacking the life of God. He's what we all were from Adam. It's difficult sometimes to realize that there are two men, and both of them have characteristics, and especially when we've worked so hard in our life to make that old guy function properly, we begin to realize you get to a verse like this, well God has set him aside because he's not worth it. old man crucified that the body of sin, what's the body of sin? That's where we left off.

The word for body is soma, human body. I think it refers to the believer's physical body. Because that's where the sin nature dwells. Dwells in the body. Now some have said that the body of sin can refer to the whole thing of sin. But if you use the word Soma, I think it has to do with a body. Without a body, your sin nature has no expression. If you didn't have a body, how would you sin?

It communicates to the world. So, my body is the vehicle through which the sin nature functions. Now, the other interesting thing is When we physically die, our soul and spirit go home to be with the Lord, right? Where's your body go? In the ground. Where's your sin nature go? Think so? I'm going to stay out of those cemeteries. There's too many sin natures in them. What's that? Well, I mean, your sin nature didn't die. Did it? Or did it? I dive to it, sure.

And the point being is that before you were saved, you needed to be, in order to be acceptable to God in your position, you needed to be separated, and in this verse it talks about being crucified, in order to put, the purpose here is to put that sin nature in neutral to keep it from manifesting itself through your body to get you to not be a vehicle for sin, right? Isn't that what the purpose is? It says so that the old man or that knowing this our old man, the men we were before we were saved was crucified with him in order that the physical body which at that time was dominated by the sinful nature might be rendered inoperative. The purpose of our co-crucifixion with Christ, the first purpose is so that we wouldn't be slaves to sin anymore and that we would be separated from it.

Positional truth now, right? Still talking about positional truth. That we would be separated from it positionally and so we wouldn't be controlled by it anymore. Invulnerability. Let's see how good her memory is. That caught my attention. I think that was on the conditional side though, rather than the positional side. Yeah, we're talking about the conditional side here. I'm just curious how that fit.

Romans 6.6 is not conditional, it's positional. He is giving us the reasons for crucifixion. In other words, for grace to reign there has to be some events take place in order that grace can be in a reigning position. In the first ten verses of Romans 6, my word showed the mechanics of how God did this.

In order for us not to be slaves to sin anymore, he had to do something other than just forgive us or pay the penalty for our sins and the guilt. He had to somehow separate us from that entire issue of sin, right? Because he was going to separate himself being made sin for us, separate himself entirely from the sin issue, right? So how does he get us?

Separated. The mechanics of it are being crucified with Christ. Our old man was crucified with him, that's how he did it. And this verse starts out by saying, you know this, this is something we got to grasp on, we understand, we know. That our old man was crucified with him.

Okay. For what purpose? That we would no longer be a slave to sin. That's why we did it. That's a positional truth. You okay with that? One thought. Thinking about positional truths, we oftentimes distinguish between whether or not this is conditional or positional, and I think it's very important, right? Because the location of that promise has a function, whether it be a truth that is about us and our position with Christ, or where we are conditionally. But every positional truth has a conditional impact. And the fact that we're not slaves is a conditional opportunity of faith, right?

Well, I do agree with that, but so far he hasn't told us, the author hasn't said, here's what you do about it. I'm just giving you the information. And the information is your old man was crucified with the result that you would no longer have to be a slave to sin.

A condition that makes all the difference in the world. Oh my goodness, it does. Your whole life changes if you get your arms around that. Yeah, everything changes. I think that's where we struggle with time, is that here's these positional truths that we're taking grasp of, and we're so blessed to be able to do that, but then we turn around and it's that same question we ask ourselves, but do I believe it?

Conditionally, does it have any impact on me whatsoever, now that I know not a slave to sin, and whatever I'm dealing with right now, I'm separated from, and it has no reign over me because of my position in Christ. And so it has huge conditional impacts. It's that so what now, right? And it just dawned on me that, you know, continuing to recognize positional truths, but also understanding that this has a huge conditional impact on the way I live.

Well, there's two sides to that coin. The one side is the crucifixion side, and the fact that I'm not a slave to sin. The other side is, well, what do I do now? Yeah, so what? Yeah, you know, it's one thing to say, well, My old man was crucified. I'm no longer a slave to sin. Great. What do I do now? So as we go through the verses now, crank down through them, it gets laid out really carefully. You're right. There's nothing that Paul is talking about doing in these stories right now. Right. There's a lot to rest in. Yeah. The apprehension, the mental apprehension of what this word, this verse is telling us, has an impact that will change your whole way you view everything.

Because you're going to find out, especially as you go through the rest of Paul's epistles, well, not only was I separated from my old man, but gee, how about the world and the law? All based on my being crucified with Christ. I was talking to a Catholic buddy of mine. He has this concept here of dying. And I told him, as a believer, and I spoke to him as if he were, as a believer you've already died. It blew his mind. Sure it does. He'd never ever concepted that. No. And I don't think he's ever read Romans 6. I'm sure he hasn't. It's foreign. It's a foreign concept.

Let me read a Weiss translation of this verse. For in view of the fact that we are those who have become permanently united with Christ with respect to the likeness of his death, certainly also we shall be those who have become permanently united with him with respect to the likeness of his resurrection." Pretty cool how he did it, how he put it together. I think that's probably enough and we'll go to the next.

I got a question, so what came first? Salvation or condemnation? Say that again? What came first? Salvation or condemnation? Condemnation. Sure. If you're not condemned, why do you need to be saved? Right. I mean, if everything's cool, I don't need a savior. Right? So, Lesson 21. So what happens to the same nature there?

Goes to Havana. I don't know. You know that's one of those things that I've thought about for a long time. I really don't know. I think it goes in the grave with your body. I don't know. It goes to Mike's house on his home slate. It's in my computer. I don't know. I know it doesn't go with me.

That's the... When your very dad bashes up the Buffalo Creek, Wayne says, Well, this is the last thing we can do for the old man. Yeah. And that's true. You know, we're looking at Romans 6.3 that we were buried with him. And what does burial mean? That's the last act of my association on the earth. So, I suppose it's... I don't know. It's got to be annihilated. The old man...

I mean, Romans 8.3 says, that what the law couldn't do that God did by sending his son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. So the sin nature is condemned. When the condemnation is carried out, is it when you die?

I don't know. I think it was done at the cross. See, the way I try and figure this out, you look at it from... It's got to be good. Yeah. Let the engineering mind go after it. If you look at it from the other way, that's why I say, I think from the eternal side, it's all instantaneous.

All the people who have gone before us don't have time. So basically, everything's happening on the other side almost at the same time. So all the believers who have gone ahead of us are almost instantaneously, we're behind them. So we're trying to reconcile about what happens and all this stuff. I think on the eternal side, it's instantaneous. So there isn't this lagging of the body and the spirit and the soul and all that.

You know what I'm saying? We're looking at it from our time perspective. On the other side, there is no time. Yeah, I'm not sure we can look at it any other way than there's some time, because we don't have the capacity to look at eternity. We believe in it, but we don't get our arms around what eternity is. I like McAuley's concept of that, being very alive. Interesting.

Okay, we're going to move on now. We're going to do verses 7 through 11. The first question was, Kenneth Weiss says that Romans 6 is the mechanics of a spirit-filled life. What do you think he meant by that? The mechanics. I love the term. The growth? No. He uses the word machinery. It's a great word. What do you think he means? Would you say it was like building blocks for your faith? Okay. Building blocks is good.

I think JD was describing it well by saying, you know, here's this information. Here's what God did. He brought all of this into being. And this was his creation in terms of, this is physically how I'm going to do it. This is how I did it. I crucified my son and I include you.

How about, does the center of the shaft move? Say that again? You got bearings. Does the center of that shaft move? Yeah, it does. Well, maybe look at it this way. We can talk all day long about being separated from Adam and united to Christ, but what these verses tell us is how God did it. It's the mechanics of how he did it. We were driving on the way up here and he was asking me about, what is that big crane thing? How does that thing work? What does it do?

It moves this pile of That stuff gets consumed and used and that's what's going on here. There's changes being made, there's mechanisms by which God is completely altering us from who we were in Adam to who we are in Christ. And this is the mechanical explanation of how that's going to be. What I love about this verse is that it verifies to me that God is eager for me to know everything he's doing and has done.

He details the explanation. He doesn't walk around and keep me in the dark, like my former denomination did. I'm not going to explain this, but you all know what the Mushroom Management Principle is? You keep them in the dark and you feed them. That's the Mushroom Principle. Well, a lot of denominations operate on the Mushroom Principle, but God in His Word is eager to lay out to us and let us know not only who he is but exactly what he's done and what he's doing.

The fact that he would just do that is a marvel to me. He lets us know. He wants us to know. He doesn't want us to be ignorant about all that he's done and what he continues to do. It's really important to me that God would be of such a character that he would tell me It's kind of neat that he does. Now some of us have an attitude, I don't want to know. Yeah, you do. You do want to know.

So, in answer to the first question, it gives us the mechanics as to how God separated us from Adam and united us to Christ. That's really what it is. Question two. How does a believer get free? from the principle of sin. So you have to look at a couple of things here. The Apostle Paul has just given us two really salient facts.

The first is that when he saves a sinner he has separated him from the indwelling sinful nature. He did that. And we, until we find this out, we've been hanging on to that thing as hard as we could. And now he's separated us from it so that I'm not compelled to sin anymore.

Do you understand that? Maybe that's a better question. Do you view yourself, at least at some time in your life of having been a slave to sin, that you couldn't control sin, that when it decided it was going to manifest itself through you. It just did it, no matter what you tried not to do. Does everybody agree with that? I was sitting with a guy a couple of years ago in my family room. We were talking and he said, you know what?

He said, every once in a while, I've got this demon in me that just comes out of me and I do the craziest things and I can't control him. And I said to him, oh that demon has a name in the Bible, Romans 6. He said, what is it? I said, it's called the sin nature. He was really excited to find out that his demon had a name. And he couldn't control it. That was the secret.

Do you ever feel like that? I mean, I have. I still do. The sin nature decides it's going to control me and bingo. That's why I was thinking about this a little bit. Often times when I recognize this nature at work in my mind, wrestling for that attention that it doesn't deserve and I'm separated from. We use the deposed monarch many times as a term for that. I have to, I don't think of this very often, but I have to reach back through the cross and all that happened to that nature to give it the attention that it deserves.

For me, it's like the visual on the board here. This is who I am over here. It's Romans 5. Romans 6 is saying that I've been separated from that. I'm no longer a slave to it. But in order to obey it, I have to reach all the way back through all that sin nature has been put through in terms of separation in order to give it the attention of slavery that it wants. It wants to enslave me once again. That's right. But we were studying James on Wednesday nights, kind of interesting about the temptation, the dangling of the bait. And the bait is being dangled from all the way back there.

And it says to me, this is really good for you. You would love doing this. This is designed just for you to fulfill every desire you've ever had. And you say, OK. And that's when you become vulnerable to everything. That's right. Once you do that, you're toast. But also what that proves is the focus. Even if looking back, you know, a little bit different than that.

I'm not looking. If you're looking at me, you're still. It's looking at Christ. The whole thing is when your focus is off Christ. Yeah, that's true. The bait is over here. What am I doing? I'm taking my eyes off the Lord and I'm looking over here. But you know what James says, James said in a very interesting comment, he said, it all comes from within me. Right, but what am I doing? I'm watching. I'm paying attention. My choice is to go, oh. As it says, I was dangling here. Let me ask you a question.

Do you think if the spirit didn't indwell you that you'd always be making that decision? Absolutely. You'd go for the bait every time. That's the incredibly stupid part. It seems so stupid, but boy, when the music starts and my feet start to move, I think, why are you moving? It does seem instantaneous. It does.

Well, you know, I remember Hal gave a whole class on just that one, two verses and they were a step down. And I remember raising my hand and saying, I don't know about this step down. What you're talking about is a slide where I live. You know, I go from here to here, you know, delivering this baby a death like bang. There's no gestation period in my life.

So anyway, two things. The first one is that we've been separated from the indwellings in nature. Okay. And that's a permanent deliverance from the power of sin. That's what God tells me. The problem is at the same time the sin nature is left within me. The other, the second thing that God at the same time has imparted to me is the divine nature, the resurrected life of Christ. And he gives me with that both the desire and the power to do God's will.

He's done that. Now, he repeats these great truths in the event that some of his readers may not have caught on to the full implication of them again and again through six. See that? So he's done, the answer to the question, how does God, how does a believer get free from the principle of sin?

The first thing is you know some things. You know two really basic things. One, that I'm separated from the sin nature. And two, I have a new nature. That's the first step. You've got to know those two things. Don't you find it interesting how much time God spends in teaching us what we should know? Now, there's a result. There's a two-fold result from having that understanding. And I thought, having that transaction happen, no, that's not a good place. I was thinking about it, maybe like having heart surgery or heart transplant.

But at the same time, as we trust in what God has said, He will distinguish in us and disengage us from that evil nature. He'll separate us from it. We won't any longer be compelled to obey it. That's what he's telling us. You don't have to be compelled to obey the sin nature.

And he's imparted to me a divine nature which becomes in him a new source of my whole life. I have a new sense of morality. I have a new sense of righteousness. I have a whole new set of ethics. that the old man has no idea what they're really all about. In other words, I have what I would call spiritual life. And guess what the result of that is? I begin to do what I thought was impossible.

I begin to hate sin. You can't hate sin without understanding this. And I begin to love righteousness at the same time. Have you ever asked yourself this question, God, is there ever going to be a time in my life where I love the Lord Jesus more than I love me?

Because I really love me. I want to satisfy me. It is all about me. You know the great cartoon, the guy in front of the firing squad with all the guys ready to shoot him and his statement is, in the end it still is about me. Can I love the Lord Jesus more than I love me?

Yeah. Because I have a nature now that that's the way it functions and operates. And I can actually hate to think sin. Wow. Couldn't do that before. Couldn't do that if all I knew was that I had been forgiven. So... We could say that God is the one who is constantly putting forth energy in you, giving you both the desire and the power to do His will, Philippians 2, 12 and 13. That verse says, So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. How did he work that in you?

This new resurrected nature we have, it's there, you have it. And it all happened at the cross. You got separated from the old sin nature and you got a new nature. That transaction happened at the cross. You just didn't have a change of attitude, you had a change of nature.

You okay with that? So, let's do this, read Romans 6 and 7, somebody. Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin, for he who has died is free from sin. So, my question is, how are you assured that verse 6 and 7 are true? What do you think? It's a knowledge. And notice that he's answered the question that those of us who have died to sin, how should we be any longer dealing with it or be involved in it?

By showing that this is a mechanical impossibility for two reasons. You can't serve two masters. The first reason is the power of the sinful nature has been broken and so therefore the Christian is not compelled to sin. Let me ask you, I've asked several of these questions this morning and most of you are shying away from them because they expose you for the sinners you are.

How many of you have actually experienced the fact that you are compelled to sin? Hey, we've got some honest people in the room. I love it. Yeah, I'm compelled to sin. Is that something to be ashamed of? I think so, in light of what God has done. The second thing is, again, the divine nature that we have, we see from Christ. We don't want to sin. Do you understand? Have you ever thought about that? When I became a Christian, it dawned on me, well, I don't want to do this anymore. What happened? I just don't want to do it. That's Roman 7 truth. You think so?

The good that I would, I find not. But the evil, which I hate. I was like the first day a Christian. A lot of the stuff that I was doing in my life that day had to go. I didn't like it anymore. It was offensive to me. Believe it or not, I've had a reputation of having a Marine Corps mouth. But that next day, if I heard somebody take the Lord's name in vain, it bothered me. I thought, gee, that is weird. But it just did. This is the one who saved me and now people are taking his name in vain? How can you do that? The day before, it was fine. I was doing it. So there's a change.

You know what's kind of weird now is, thinking about it, before we were saved, we didn't have a choice. Now we do it by choice. It's kind of a weird thought, you know, before I had no choice. Well, you didn't have a choice, but you were in the game willingly. Yeah, that's what I mean. But you were a slave. Yeah, it's weird. I actually had the choice not to. But I do. It's even kind of more humbling in that, why do I do it now? I mean, the stupidity of doing it becomes more evident to me. Why do I dance when the music goes? Why do I do that? Why do I make that choice? Why do you?

Well, I think it all comes back, you know, the more and more I study Faith. You know, I think it's, do I believe what he tells is true of me? And all these things he's laid out, I think it's, I either doubt it or I don't believe it or something. I just don't believe what he's laid out. And I make the wrong choice.

Am I dead to sin and am I alive to God? I mean, that's the basic, that's the rudimentary. What we find here is you go through all these epistles, he lays out so much more truth about who we are in Christ and what that means. And yet, I willingly choose otherwise when I sin.

Yeah, I think in that point you're probably, if you're like me, you're looking for a scapegoat. You know, somebody else made me do it when, no, I did it. Ain't nobody else in here but me. That's right. I've always wanted it to be more complex than something I don't believe in. I guess there's got to be more strings that I can pull and fix. It's not just me not believing something, right? But it is. And as old as that is going to get in our minds, and in this class, and in this church, and in our home, there's something I'm not believing right now.

And that's the root of the issue. It is the root of the issue. I find that if I get angry with somebody, it's always their fault. No, it's my fault. And I don't know that at first, you know, I'm blaming everybody and every other thing, which means I'm not trusting what God has told me.

But he understands that too, and that he says the child training, that's what he's doing. I mean, he knows that. And he's allowed these things to go on in our lives, but to train us, and to strengthen our faith, and to strengthen in what we believe. And I think that's I guess I'm saying it wasn't unknown to God that we would be this way. He knew it and he's training us in spiritual growth that we have.

Yeah, in this James study we're going through the word parasmasa dacimas. Parasmasa is a temptation to sin for failure. Dacimas is approving you through the trial. And I can't start out as a believer engaging in sinful behavior, taking the bait, so to speak, being tempted to fail, and he intercepts that to use that to approve me.

It's amazing how he does that. He allows you to sin, he allows all these things, he allows, you know, tragedies in your life. He allows a lot of these things. That's why I always couple the sovereignty of the Lord's beating into me, I think. The sovereignty of God. He's in control of all these things. But the other is that He loves you. And He's not doing this out of malice.

Well, what's interesting is before you get to any of that, the first thing He lays out for us is right here. Here's what I've done. And when He gets to 11, He's going to say, now your response to this is really simple. Here's what I've done, okay? Somebody read verse 8.

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. So my question in question 4 is, when will we be doing this? When will we be living with Him? He says, He says look, If we died, and that's one of those ifs of fulfilled condition. Did you die? Yeah, I did. Then we believe that we shall also live with him. When is the when? No, when will we be living with him? When we're raised from the dead. Haven't you already been raised from the dead? We were buried alive. We were raised from the dead, right? So when will we be living with him?

Right now? How many think it's right now? Yeah, it's right now. It's Colossians 3? Yeah. If you were crucified with him, is that a fact? He said so. Then when am I going to be living resurrected with him? What's wrong with right now? You guys aren't Catholics, you don't have to do a purgatory thing here. Yeah.

Since I've been buried with him, I also am going to be living with him. Both sides of the cross again. Old man, new man. Crucifixion, death, and life. The life is now. Right now. Do you see that? Mr. Emerald writes about this. in this world. In this world, right now. Think about what God has done here.

Not only has He taken care of my relationship to this old man, right? But on this side, He says, now we're going to live. We're going to live a resurrected life, the life of my Son, the Lord Jesus, and we're going to do it now. Right now, because I separated you from this, I've united you to Him, There's no time gap.

Right now. Right now. Colossians 3 just says, you know, that we have died and our life is hidden with Christ. Yeah. Since you'd be risen with Christ, we're risen with him. So, there's a mindset now that A lot of us spend a lot of time focusing on why I was crucified.

But we don't spend a lot of time on, wait a minute, I'm living with him, what is this? And there's the learning part. I'm to grow in the knowledge and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is my new life. I've had enough growing in the knowledge of my old man. I'm done. I'm living with him now. Right now.

He gave us his word. He gives us fellowship with other believers. He gives us the Holy Spirit so we can learn how that life, his life, functions moment by moment. Now. Right now. You don't have to wait. So how long does it take the believer to receive his spiritual life from the Lord Jesus? Instantaneous. When we're placed in Christ.

Yeah, and so there's a couple of points I probably didn't ask this question very long. The spiritual life from the Lord Jesus is yours as long as you live. How long are you going to live? Forever. So we did die once, but now, and the lordship of sin over us was eliminated once, for me to be sustained in spiritual life will last as long as Christ lives, because it's his life.

Not only his life, but the sustaining of his life. You okay with that? Okay, we're moving ahead today. Verse 9. Knowing, here's that word again, something else we know, that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him. So, what does it mean, knowing? What do I know? What kind of knowing is it? I think it's epinosis. We know intimately and thoroughly. How well do we know that? It says knowingness. We know it. Full apprehension of it maybe is a better question.

Knowing this, knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead dies no more. That's something new. That Christ was raised from the dead, he isn't going to die anymore, right? That death no longer has dominion over him. Did death really have dominion over Christ at some point? What do you think? Do you think it did? Yes. Yeah, it did. It did have a mastery over him for a time.

Because he died. The wages of sin is death. When he's made sin for us, guess what? He's died. So what it tells us is that he did die once for all. And having been raised from the dead, he isn't going to die anymore. It's amazing to me that we're looking at the second person of the Trinity who became a man who actually died. The second person of the Trinity didn't die, it was the man who died. But, how do you divorce 100% God, 100% man? The humanity part, he died, he got separated from God. How do you know that that happened? When did that happen? Do you know when that event was?

God turned away from him. And what did he do? What did he say? He was finished. He said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That lets you know. It was gone. It was broken. And then he gave up his spirit. It's finished. What was finished? Dealing with the entire sin issue was done. Not going to have to deal with that anymore. Why?

Because sin was totally dealt with at the cross. Not only the punishment and the guilt, but the entire principle of sin was dealt with. So there is no reason for him to die anymore. There is no reason for those who are in him to even contemplate dying. No reason for it. Because are you going to have to stand before him and talk about this and deal with the sins that you commit this afternoon?

No, they're all paid for. They're all done. And your sin nature's been condemned. And you've been separated from it. Pretty cool. It's not a very hopeful outlook for this afternoon. Yeah. Broncos are playing. Nobody's going to cuss. They aren't playing. No, they played Thursday.

Now notice it says he was raised from the dead ones. That's really what it said. What does that mean? You know, the new King James. No longer Christ having been raised from the dead. That really means the dead ones. So he was united with all of us and we were dead ones. We were separated from God. Do you realize that it took more power for God to raise Christ from the dead ones than it did to do the creation? It took all three persons of the Godhead to raise Christ from the dead, all three of them.

Pretty serious stuff. He's never going to die again because he's out from under death. He went under it, it had control over him, he died, but now he's out from it. Never going to go back there again. Question 7, it seems to be redundant, but what I'm after is, did death have a mastery over Christ? Sin never had dominion over Him, and death could have had no dominion except that our sin was transferred to Him.

See that? You alright with 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. You okay with that? That's what Newell says. One thought here. I was talking about a friend that's concerned about death. Yeah. Just plagues him, right? And I think there's a lot of people that deal with that same thing. But this is the knowledge that needs to be known. needs to be believed as knowing. At this point, known. Right, as known.

If death has no mastery over him, death has no mastery over me. Now death has those three parts, the physical death, spiritual death, and the eternal separation, right? But physically, that's the only thing left. for me, and knowing this, there's no mastery of that. It's not controlling who I am in Christ. It has no bearing on my true person. No. It's just a location. That's right.

And that sets your heart at ease about death for the believer. Yeah, it does. I'm just saying, this truth is the very thing that or dealing with death, or seeing death. Yeah, it's really interesting right here, if you just sat down as, say, a young believer and you wrote down pronouncements that God has made in these first ten verses of chapter six, just write down what they are. And then take a good hard look at them and decide for yourself, are they true or not? They are true, whether you decide or not. But they, like J.D. was saying, they represent a dynamic shift in your entire existence.

Because this deals with right at the core of where every human being is. Sin and dominion, Christ's work on the cross, my inclusion in it, and resurrected life. It's all right here. That's why Paul actually, when he refers later to anybody who has died, he doesn't say died, they're asleep. You've already died. So that's why he translates all that to better sleep. You've already died.

Yeah. Yeah, we did. We did. And I would say that the better acquainted you are with these truths and resting them by faith, when it comes time for you to leave the planet, that's really how you'll look at it. Oh, I'm just leaving. Today's my day. See ya. You've already left. Yeah, I died already. So this is just a I'm going from here to there. I get to leave the body finally. So let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you for how gracious you are to show us the completeness of your work on the cross. We're so thankful and we trust that we can continue to grow in this knowledge and be able to rest by faith in these wonderful facts. And we pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.