Who You Are In Christ - Complete in Him

This will be a good chance to kind of show you where we're going. This is, we're getting to the end of the 33 Reaches of God's Grace. And because of my poor math, I It's 39 weeks and three quarters, not 33 weeks. So what I did, actually, I found that there were some other things that Schaeffer had kind of covered. There's a book on grace, which if you don't have it, is an excellent book that Schaeffer wrote. And he covers at least five of the topics. So we're going to cover those when we finish next week on these 33 riches of God's grace. really, they kind of dovetail in real nicely with who we are in Christ. They're just some other aspects of looking at it. Some of them we've already kind of covered in some sense.

So this class will go through the end of September, which will be the fifth on that. So we're going to cover today complete in Him, which I found is just a tremendous statement. It doesn't seem like it. It seems kind of innocuous, complete in Him. What does that mean? But hopefully, we'll see what that is. All right.

So the key verse here today is Colossians 2, 9 and 10. For in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. And in him you have been made complete, and he is the head over all rule and authority. And we're really just going to look at 9 and the first part of 10, the A part of 10. today.

So actually, maybe before we jump in, don't look too far ahead. You probably already have. So it's something that kind of strikes you. Looking at these two verses, I think it strikes you about what's being said. Maybe a condition for what's being said in those two verses. And it's something that actually you'll see in a lot of the study. There's a two-word little phrase. In you. Good, excellent. And that's really kind of key, because the first one is going to describe what's in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is fully God and fully man.

That's covered elsewhere. Actually, in a sense, the fully man is in there too with the bodily form. I had not actually thought of that. And then the ten is going to talk about an aspect of being in him, being complete in him. So, and then we're going to look at this word fullness. It's going to kind of be a real key word here in this. And we're going to kind of delve into that.

And then the dwelling aspect. And it's really, there's some neat things here. So we'll just go on. OK, so first of all, it's kind of good to just get on the basics here. And actually, if you look at this first little, in verse 9, you'll see that the main the main subject and the verb.

The fullness is the subject and dwells is a verb. And the rest of that sentence are modifiers. They modify either dwells or fullness. So the fullness is what's being talked about here. So we're going to try to understand what that means. So fullness is this word plural. I'm sorry. It's actually that of which a thing is full, is what Vine says about that.

And an example of that is in Colossians 1.19, for it was a father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him. So these verses are very, very close.

What would you say the difference between Colossians 1.19 and 1.9 are? Is there some additional information that you see in 19 verses 9? Colossians 2 9. What would you say about that? Well, one is talking about God dwelling in Christ. Okay. And the other is talking about 9. It's... is him. Well, actually, if you look carefully, it's kind of the order of the words in the English.

Fullness is dwelling in him in 2.9, right? And then actually it says virtually the same. fullness, it was his good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him. So the dwelling of this fullness is kind of the key aspect of both those verses. And notice that it's another word that kind of comes up here is this word all. All occurs in both, actually I think this thing is, there we go. All's there, so all the fullness, the completeness of God is to dwell in Christ.

And then the other thing that kind of strikes you, I think, is that it says it was the Father's good pleasure. So what do you think that is speaking about? The Father's good pleasure. Christ was equal to God. I looked up that word a little bit, and it says it actually could be was pleased. So it kind of struck me that's really his will, right? I mean, what pleases him is his will. It sounds kind of rhetorical.

Christ, the Holy Spirit, and God are all one. And it says it was pleasing to God that Christ had all of God in him. I mean, it sounds kind of, you think, strange, but I think it's really to convey to us that the deity of Christ, and actually a lot of these verses are very much about who Christ is, at least the first part here, who Christ is, that he's fully God. He's fully deity. And it's all of deity. There's not one little bit left. Some cults have tried to make, well, Christ is not fully God. When he became a man, he kind of became less than God. Well, no. He's fully God as a man. And that's what we're going to see here in more detail shortly. Go ahead.

Isn't the importance of that that the sacrifice had to be made by God So a human body was required to die, and only the perfect being of God would be sufficient for the sacrifice to be accepted. Right. For our sins. Right. It had to satisfy a holy God, right? So only, in essence, only God's character could satisfy him, right? It had to be perfect. And you're right. I think that's one issue, the sin issue if you will. Christ had to be the perfect God and the perfect man.

But I think this verse is kind of trying to really nail down that every bit of God is in Christ. There's not one particle of difference. The total totality of God is in Christ. This is trying to really nail that down. And then there's going to be a wonderful statement about how does a believer in Christ fit into that? How do we fit into that? is verse 10. So the first part to establish all of God is in Christ. His total deity is in Christ, is what I think is being said here. So actually, in a way, I'm going to answer my question here. So what is this fullness that Christ has? I've already answered it.

It's basically the, it says the fullness and it's of deity. It's completeness. Completeness of deity. It's what fills Christ is the very essence of God. And we're going to look at this word deity right next year. It's not just a little essence. Right. It's a totality. Right, exactly.

Christ isn't just a little bit of God. We don't, so like, well, we're going to get a look now. We get the totality of God. You know, Christ said, If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Christ was a physical manifestation of the Father. So the physical manifestation was Christ. They have different positions and different names, but they're the same. They have different functions.

And so that fullness is actually the Holy Spirit. Well, I think the fullness is the essence of God, who is in his character. Like I think it was a couple of weeks ago we looked about God as holy, his essence, he's holy, righteous, just, omnipresent. He has a whole list of his characteristics.

But the Holy Spirit is the same. Exactly. So for God to, the one that would indwell in Christ would be the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does indwell God. And the fullness of the Holy Spirit, the complete. That's true. I think I would prefer to say it's the fullness of God. I think you say the fullness of the Holy Spirit. To me that might be confusing. I don't know. It's just me. It's just me.

The essence of God is both in the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. There. They have that essence of who God is. Actually, let's just look for a second. Let's turn to John. Gospel of John. And... While we're turning... Okay, go ahead. You had something else you wanted to say. I may have lost it. I've been studying the wind that's crossed the way over here. Okay. You've been studying the wind that's... Let's see. I don't know how you did that. Okay. All right.

The important thing is not that he is filled with the Holy Spirit. He doesn't need the Holy Spirit to be completely God. We need it. He doesn't need it to do acts of God. He is God. He is fully God. His healing, whatever. his explanations of things, his concepts and all, but I don't think they come from the Holy Spirit.

They are part of him being God. But there are verses, just to kind of, there are verses that talk about Christ's dependence upon the Spirit. So that's also another truth. So you've got to, you know, each of the Godhead, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are fully God, but Christ...

Because he's in this role down here. And he became a man. So in that role, and that's where he's a prototype for us. He depended upon the spirit to do, to live this bodily life here. But his essence was fully God. So there gets to be, this gets to be kind of heavy in the head. I don't know. I'm not sure I, sure. Right. getting man being what he is and God knowing what man is. You need a visible, something visible to see God. Exactly, exactly. And in that point, that sense of the term, in a way, it was all God and all man at the same time. Exactly. He was God. Right. And if you could see God, he might even look like you.

Well, and I like to think of it as The only God we're ever going to see is Christ. Because he's the only physical manifestation of God. We don't have a physical manifestation of the Father or the Spirit. Christ is it. God has chosen to physically manifest himself as Christ. And that's when Christ says, if you see me in my physical being, you've seen the Father. So, I mean, we accept that, you know. And no man has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained to him and declared him.

I mean, Christ is it. I mean, and we're going to see Christ in heaven with the physical marks of the cross, which is another thing. That physical nature of Christ is going to continue on. I mean, that's incredible that in heaven you think You know, we're going to get a new body in heaven. But Christ is going to have...

This is totally off the track here. Isaiah 53. Read Isaiah 53. That isn't a very pretty picture. No, this is not a very pretty picture. It is not. Isn't it incredible that our Savior is going to... We get a new body. He keeps the marks of His body on the cross. I mean, it's just, you know, pretty incredible stuff. Pretty incredible.

If you look at the Gospel of John chapter 1, just thinking about the fact that Christ was God in eternity past. It says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So Christ has been God for all eternity past. He didn't cease to be God when he became a man, and he continues to be God.

So this is just, I think this verse here is really trying to nail down that the fullness of God is in the bodily form of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it just really cuts away all the wrong views of who Christ is. He's there in bodily form. And he's God in bodily form. He's the God-man.

So it's hard to fathom a lot of these things. But it also shows that they were separate. Exactly. And that's the other part that we have three but one. I mean, people, you know, spent, you know, a lot longer in our lifetime going through that. Right. I mean, three but one. I mean, that's what we had to spend.

Because he repeats that. He actually says he was in the beginning with God. Right. He's separate, but God. I know. It is pretty incredible. Okay. Alright. So the initial part between 119 and 2.9, the other part here, it was God's will. And this is another part. It was His will that Christ have the fullness of God in Him. Okay. Alright, so let's go on.

OK, so now we're going to look at a couple other words here. We're going to look at the word deity. And this is a word that, if you have a King James, many times you'll see the word deity. Actually, there are three cases in the King James where, instead of using divine or divine nature, they'll use the word godhead. And this is a particular word. that kind of speaks of the very essence of God. His very essence. And that's why I think they translated it Godhead. It occurs here in this verse and then a couple of other verses. Actually, one I'm going to show you next here.

So let's look at, if you open your Bibles to Romans chapter 1. Can I get someone to read that verse for me? Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1, in verse 20, I get, "...for since the creation of the world is in visible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse."

So if I think, like Bud, yours says God had a bed. You have King James? So why don't you read yours just for us. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. So the New American Standard has divine nature. And like King James will have Godhead.

And that's this word, it's a word with theos. I'm not sure I can pronounce it exactly. Anyway, it's really speaking of God's very essence. The very essence of God. So that's what, it's a fullness of this very essence of God that's to dwell in bodily form in the Lord Jesus Christ. So it's a fullness of this essence of God. So we establish, first of all, that God wants all of this fullness, and now this further defines it. He wants the total essence of God to be present in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But interestingly, in verse 20, we just looked at it, in 1.20, you know, what strikes me here, look at this, this verse is what, this is what man can see that's not outside of Christ, right? Because it says, it's talking about, it says, for since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, eternal power, and divine nature, or Godhead, have been clearly seen. So he says that man, even outside of Christ, will see, they won't see all the essence of God. All the essence of God is only described in this book. We can look and see the essence of God, holy, righteous, just. But man can go out and look at the mountains and the trees, and he can see something of God, right?

So actually, in a way, I don't know. In studying this, there is some disagreement about whether this word, and it's a slightly different word, even though it's translated the same, whether this word is properly speaking of all of his essence. Because the natural man can't see, without reading this book, you can't see the essence of God. You can't understand the essence of God, I should say.

But man can go out and look and they can see his power, the storms come, we have all that rain. Look at this, it's 100 degrees here for 20 some days or whatever it was, and all of a sudden the rain comes and it just, you know, there's tremendous power. God has tremendous power and that's displayed. But the essence of God is only understood truly by a believer who can read his word. So I'm just trying to make a distinction.

It seems like Romans 1.20 It's a slightly different, that divine nature is more talking about what the world can see, including the unsaved. Roger, don't you think that's kind of like, if you look at a building that Frank Lloyd Wright, built, you would know something about him, but you would not know everything about him.

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly true. I mean, unless you knew Frank Lloyd Wright personally. Right. Right. It's funny. I want just to get off the track just a little bit here. My wife's from Pennsylvania, and there's this famous Frank Lloyd Wright structure called Falling Water. He built this house in the middle of a waterfall. You're getting to a point where you're like, this guy, is he all there really? You go in this place, it's an incredible structure. But it's terrible, imagine living in a waterfall. It's a fabulous building if I'm not wrong, and they keep restoring it and keep it going. It'd be noisy. It'd be noisy, I don't know. But he wanted to have this building that, I don't know, he was an interesting guy.

That's all I got to say. You wouldn't have to worry about connecting to city water. I'm not sure how good the water was. It wasn't exactly, it was, I don't know. The waterfall and the house were kind of right next to each other. I mean, it's not like it fell, you know, so the water, it was just incredible.

But you're right. I mean, I wouldn't, you look at that and you say, wow, this guy was pretty incredible. And it actually stayed there. It's been there for, I don't know, a long time. and they've had to restore it a bit. But it's a pretty incredible structure.

But you don't really know who Frank Lloyd Wright unless you relate to him. Well, we can relate to the Lord Jesus through his word and know his essence, who he is. That's the difference with 120. It says a man can see his power, but they don't come to know him unless they look in his word and see who he is.

And there's actually a third verse Let's look at Acts 17 and verse 29. And the reason I picked these other two verses is because of the fact that they all translated it Godhead. Okay, 17 and verse 29. We are the offspring of God. We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. Okay. Okay, that's good. Yeah, so in the King James, it's Godhead. In American Standard, it's divine nature. It says, we ought not to think that the divine nature is like silver or gold. Silver, I'm sorry, gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. So God's, who he is in his essence is not something that man could do. Only God can, it's not something, okay, I'm going to make God today. No, we can't do that. Yeah. So only God, you know, His essence is unique. OK, let's go on.

So the next word is dwell. So we're kind of marching through this. For in him, all the fullness of deity dwells. This word dwell is to inhabit as one abode. It comes from the word dwelling place. Actually, it has the idea. And actually, it's a compound word. And let me just go to that part of it here. Kata is a prefix, and that means down. And it has the idea of permanence, that this fullness of the essence of God dwelling is a permanent. It doesn't come and go. It's a permanent. I don't know that word. It's permanent. That's right.

And actually, I looked up the, Someone, this particular Greek word, it's the compound with kata and then it has orke, which is for house. It's the idea that this was used for a permanent resident of a town as compared with a transient. So in the original, it was used for a permanent resident in contrast to a transient resident. This is kind of showing the permanence of the fullness of the deity in Christ. It's permanently Him. It's not come or go. It's not going to change. It's unchangeable. It's permanent. Isn't that the same situation, Roger, as a born-again Christian? You're right on the right track.

We're going to get there. When we get to verse 10, we're going to see a tremendous similarity. And that's what's so cool about this class. We see this is true of our Savior, and then we look, wait a minute, by His grace, it's true of us because we're in Him. And that's why the in Hims are just so critical. It's true of Him. Now obviously, we don't have His omnipresence. There are limitations, but a lot of the characteristics of God are of us because we're in Him. the Holy Spirit was upon people.

Right, exactly. Good point. And guided people. Right. And at the point of Jesus, then the Holy Spirit became an indwelling presence of God. Right. Or the essence of God. And so, you know, he's the picture of the morning in Christian. Right. In the fullness. Right. And we're going to see it in just a second here. It's just, you know, that's good. That's good.

There's another verse that uses this word dwelling. It's in 1st Timothy chapter 6. 1st Timothy chapter 6. 1st Timothy chapter 6 verse 16. And let's just go back and see here. 1st Timothy chapter 6 verse 16. possesses immortality, speaking of God, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light whom no man has seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. So this dwells in unapproachable light. So this is this permanent abode of the essence of God.

Okay. All right. So now let's, and actually what's neat is here, here, here's what we does. And I always like to do, you know, I'll study the words, I'll look at the definitions of the words, I'll look at their parts of speech, whatever I can find out, and I'll try to understand that. And then I'll say, okay, let me look at, and Weiss does a great job of trying to fold those in.

So what he says, in him there is continuously and permanently at home Dwells. That's the word for dwells. He took dwell and he expanded the translation. I was so excited when I looked at the words. This word means that. And look what he did with that. He put all those things in there that describe dwells. There is continuously and permanently at home all the fullness of absolute deity. And it kind of is a check to make sure I haven't come to some crazy conclusion.

Okay, so now, here we get almost to the humanity of Christ. It dwells in bodily form. And I think what this has put in there, just to absolutely nail it down, this is the Lord Jesus Christ. It dwells in this fullness of the deity that continuously and permanently dwells, and it's in bodily form. And actually, Vincent says this bodily form means it dwells in him as one having a human body. So if we think about it, we read John 1, 1 in the beginning was a word.

So the fullness, the very essence of God dwelled in the Lord Jesus Christ in the eternity past. He becomes a man, and he continues, even though it's veiled, he continues to have the essence of God dwelling in him. And then in the eternity future, he still has the essence of God dwelling in him. So this time period, he has the very essence of God. And it's in bodily form, in a body. So now we're going to switch over to talk about the believer. And in him, You have been made complete.

And literally, this may seem a little bit strange, but there's actually kind of a hidden verb in there. Are is a verb. You are having been made complete, which sounds kind of hard to say. But actually what it is, you is the subject, are is a verb. Having been made complete actually is a participle. A participle is a verbal adjective. Having been made complete is describing you.

That you have been made complete. It's describing the believer. And we're going to find out a wonderful thing about this word complete. And it's interesting, I don't know why the translators didn't try to help us out more, but this is the same word for fullness. It's basically the verb form of fullness. So it says that all the fullness, I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Anyway, I'll just stop it for a second. So Roger, does that mean that it's present tense, having been made complete? No, it's not. I want to get to that. That's why I had that last chart in there too. First of all, let's do the subject and verb here. The you is implied. This word is eni. We saw this quite a few times last week or several weeks ago.

The state in which somewhere or something continuously exists. So the believer, this is mind-boggling, when he comes to know Christ as his Savior, he continually exists having been made complete. Clumsy English, but that's the state he's completing Christ. Now that doesn't say he acts that way.

You know, I was thinking about the Olympics, you know, the Olympics, and I go to the Olympics, you know, and you see some of these athletes and, you know, someone like Phelps, to me, he seems like he's a really pretty humble kind of guy, you know, he acts like we would like to think Americans should act, right? He's not, he's just a team player, you know, and then maybe you see other athletes, they act, you know, I haven't seen him, I haven't watched him that much, but some act. you know, not like Americans. So they're acting contrary to who they are. They're all Americans, but some act like Americans, some don't act like Americans.

Well, the believer is complete in the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing lacking. But he may not act that way. He may act contrary to that. So that helps me to kind of get that. And that's position condition that we talk about a lot. Position condition. Are we acting like who we are? So it says that you are having been made complete. And that's a permanent state. So let's go on and kind of cover Stan's question here.

Having been made complete is a participle, which Participle has some aspects of a verb and some aspects of an adjective. And the aspect of the verb, it's in the passive voice, meaning that we didn't make ourselves complete. I didn't say one day, OK, I'm going to be complete in Christ today. I actually didn't even know about that when I became a believer. I didn't have one clue about what that even meant. God made us complete in Christ.

And actually what's interesting is, if you look at that word, if you flip between pages, it's back to back. This is the verb form of the word for fullness. The two words are plerao, which is this word right here, and if you go back to the first page, Pleromai is the noun form. So this is a verb form of fullness. So basically you could say, you having been made full. Which I think would have helped a lot more in reading it because complete kind of gets me off the track a little bit. But Christ had all the fullness and we've been made full. So it links those two together. That fullness comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. We've been made full.

And what's interesting is that this made full is, it has a passive voice, but it's in the perfect tense. And that's why I put the last chart. We're going to talk about the perfect tense. And the perfect tense is, and I want to kind of distinguish that from other tenses, but the perfect tense is, it happened in the past, with abiding results, up into the future, into the present.

Basically, we've been made complete at the point of salvation, and we continue to be complete up into the present. We'll never not be complete because we're in Christ. We'll be complete for all eternity because we're in Him. Because He has the fullness. He's been made full. We have been made full, and that's a perfect tense. Happened in the past with abiding results in the present and on into the future.

And what's interesting is, here's a verse that has both the verb, both those forms in it. And if you pick up on it here, it says, here's a noun form, fullness of God. And there's a verb form, which is what we have, filled up. So this verse here is talking about our condition as we walk by faith.

It says, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. So even though we're filled in a positional sense, there is a being filled up that comes as we come to know Christ. As we come to know Him, we're filled up to the fullness. We come to realize the fullness that we have. And that's the picture that we see in this class over and over again. We have a wonderful aspect in Christ, and as we come to know it by faith, we come to understand it. and perceive it more and more. Is that our condition then? That's our condition. So this is a conditional verse, right? It says that you may, and you may not, you know? You may not do that.

I mean, I can say when I was, I was saved in the, in 80, about 81, 80, 81. 1980, 81. And I didn't know any of it. I didn't have a clue about this. I didn't, you know, I was thankful I knew the Lord Jesus and I wanted to learn about him, but I didn't know about position and condition. I didn't know about being in Christ. I didn't know any of that. I knew the basics of the gospel, but I didn't know these wonderful truths. But over time the Lord has shown me that and I've come to understand that.

So that's being filled up to the fullness of Christ. What's cool is these two words, being filled up in fullness, they kind of occur in other places too. There's at least one other I found, Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 1, Ephesians chapter 1. So in a sense, Roger, if we go back to the analogy of creation being the full essence of God, and you related to Ephesians 3.19, to sit and look at a picture of the forest gives you a certain aspect of who God is. walk into the forest and participate and feel the reality of the forest gives you a fuller understanding of who God is. So that's kind of what 3.19 is saying, right?

To know the love of Christ. In other words, to have the love of Christ as part of your life and participate within you gives you a fuller knowledge of the of the position that you've already been given. We can grow out of our condition closer to our position. in a relationship with Christ. And we participate in that relationship by His Word. We come to see His, the love of Christ. We can see it from our brothers and sisters. I'm not saying we can't, but a large part of it comes from His Word. We see what that love, it defines what love is.

Right, that's one aspect, but for some people it's the fellowship of the Spirit, which is also another aspect of getting closer to who Christ is through other Christian believers, through the Word, there's many different ways that you can experience the love of Christ. But the key is to open yourself to the love of Christ so that he can improve your perspective on who you really are. Well, like you say, your condition, how you live your Christian life, will be filled up, and the desire is that you may be filled up to the fullness. The goal of God working in you, and this is God working in you.

You can't fill yourself up. He has to do it. You can't say, okay, I'm going to go down the gap. It's not me doing it. It's Christ revealing more of making it clear His love for me. that's when I'm filled up more, not me doing it. Exactly. Because I spend time in the Bible, doesn't mean I'm not knowing. But it's being open to the Holy Spirit, having that fellowship, and Him revealing that to me.

He's the one. He's the one taking it. Just like up here, this passive voice. He's doing it. He made you complete. He made you complete when you believed. You're complete. It's a done deal. You can't change that. And now, as you walk by faith, and you interact with Him, His word and other believers, you come to understand and you're filled up. That's what scripture is.

You're filled up with the desire of the fullness. There's another verse that's somewhat similar. Ephesians 1, 23. Let's go back to Ephesians chapter 1 verse 22 and 23. And he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him, who constantly fills all in all. So, that's his desire, that he's filling us with the fullness of Christ. We come to understand and that fullness of him is evident in our lives.

Let's just go to this last chart. Actually, this is the chart that Hal put together. Some of you guys have been here before. I just re-typed it. and held it back in the 90s. But it tries to go through all the tenses here. It lists all the tenses, present and perfect, future, heiress, perfect, pluperfect. I rarely come across a pluperfect. I don't know. They're out there, but I don't know.

So for example, let's just take present for example. Present action in the present right now is continuously or durative. And the time of action is right now. And the representation is, this line here is supposed to be the present. And so the present, depending upon the writer, is present when it was written, right? I mean, when Paul wrote something, it was present to him when he wrote it. So you could say, well, OK, that's, so he's writing it as it happened presently in his writings. And like future, so future is continuously, or it can be a point. It actually doesn't show that. Oh, yeah, right here. A point is like that, a point in time. I'm not sure.

Actually, it would be good, and maybe at some point I'll try to do this. It would be good to go through and have examples of each one of these, make a whole class just on this. You're gonna have examples for each of those tents, and go to the scripture and do that. But maybe at some point we'll try to do that.

And then you come down to Eris, which is one we see a lot. Eris is what's called a past point fact. It happened in the past, but there's a little footnote down here. Eris is the idea of saying something, you know, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

I'm not sure, is that error? I have to go look it up. I'm not sure. There are many, many statements about God that are errors. God did something at a point in time. Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. It's a point in time. It happened, but the effect of that is forever, right? So that's why this note is. Errors is the emphatic method of presenting a fact or condition. It's a strong way of saying a thing is, There's no emotion equivalent. It's a once-for-all chance. Pride died for our sins once for all. It's a done deal. So it's effective forever, for all time.

So that's where I don't know, we were kind of struggling last week between that and perfect. Perfect is also something that happened in the past, but it kind of, it has this idea of continuing on up into the present and on into the future. So it seemed, you know, these two seem, similar, but they're distinct in scripture. And it would be good to go through and look at some verses on both of those. But hopefully this will be helpful, and we may talk more about it in the future at some point. So any last questions or thoughts?

What does durative mean? Durative means continuously. So next week we're going to have the last one. I think Bob's going to be doing it next week. It will be Possessing Every Spiritual Blessing. It will be the last one. And then we'll go on to these other five things. A new standing in Christ, a new life in Christ, a new presence and power of the Spirit, a new inheritance, and a new enemy. Let's close in prayer.

Dear Father, we thank you, Lord. We thank you for our time. Father, we thank you for the blessings we have. Thank you, Lord, that you've made us complete. You've made us full in Him. And we thank you that your desire is that we, by faith, come to realize what you have for us, your wonderful blessings that you have, and the love that you have for us, and that we grow in grace and the knowledge of the Savior. We ask it in His name. Amen.