Our new position in Christ

Alright, so this is, like I said, part of a long run-on sentence here, but Paul is pivoting from the previous verses where the lust of the flesh were reigning and condemning in the lives of those under Adam. And the pivot is not a minor pivot, but draws attention to the character of God.

We find a tension between God's righteousness and his love that can be reconciled in Christ, which allows us to love, or allows the love to manifest in our receiving mercy and then in an eternal outpouring of grace to us. So what I think is important here is for us to take just a moment and talk about the character of God.

God is perfect, right? And as God is perfect, the thing that I think is fascinating is that His perfection has this, on the surface, this paradox or this apparent tension that we have a God who is wrathful towards sin, because he demands righteousness, and yet he has mercy. And that by itself seems a little foreign, right? How do those things either fit compatibly or how do they juxtapose or how do we understand that? And I think this passage here is going to not only demand that we answer that, but it's going to answer it for us in a way that I think is powerful.

The idea here is that we have God at the center doing something. but God and then action. So God is doing something. And I've got this question here and we don't have to answer it, but what happens to our theology when we remove God from the center of it? And that's actually what I would consider to be a pretty important question for us to consider. A lot of what you run into when you look at the church today is you see people trying to do things with with man at the center of it. When man is at the center of it, then our theology changes. This is it. We're here. At 9 o'clock I took a picture, it was just dead empty. That's okay.

So we're just in the second paragraph there under about God. So with that question, what happens to our theology when we remove God from the center of it, what we find is that we get man-centered theology and we get man's solution and man's demands to God and man's attempt at reconciling the flesh, and that's not what Paul is doing here, and it's what we have to be careful of. If we have God at the center of our theology, then all of what Paul is about to write about in this second long run-on sentence in the book of Ephesians makes sense.

So I have broken this up into chunks here. The next phrase here is because of his great love with which he loved us. And I moved rich in mercy next. So that's out of order. from the English here, but one builds on the other. So don't be alarmed. I'm not rewriting scripture, but I want to address Paul's reasoning here. So love gets its definition in God. And as I was meditating on this during the preparation time, some powerful things came to mind. If you were here for the 1 Corinthians 13 passage, we talked about love and of course that's a famous verse for people to go to for marriage but really it's talking about pure love in the context of God and it's love for one another in the body and so Paul writes about love in his letter to the Corinthians and here I think that the definition applies that this love is a perfect expression of patience kindness, humility, it's unoffended, it's not begrudging. It should say not begrudging, not begrudging by itself. That would be error. That is not love.

It's righteous, it's rejoicing, it's harmonious with and reflective of truth, and it endures all, it entrusts all, and it hopes for all. Now if that's God's perfect love intention to His justice, God has to deal with that and that's where we run into some of these next details that he goes into with mercy. So God's love is directed towards us. This does not put us in a vulnerable position where there may be unrequited love in the believer. So if we're in a vulnerable position and we're walking away from the Lord, And this love doesn't exist.

It's not all of the things that we just went over. That's vulnerability. But God has created a system that has no vulnerability. Satan, when he comes to you as an accuser, says, oh, you screwed up this way or that way or whatever else. And he wants us to believe that we're vulnerable. But God has set it up in a way that we're not vulnerable.

And so this love, even if we could call it an unrequited love, as soon as we are joined with Christ through death or the rapture, because Christ paid the penalty for sin, this love can be expressed in a way and mercy is what shows up. And mercy affords us grace. The next question I've got here is how has God loved us?

I will turn briefly to John 3.14-18.

You're familiar with John 3.16. We always go there. It's a first Bible memory verse for a lot of kids.

What I love about John 3.16 is it's usually not taught in context.

We just all hear John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should have eternal life. And we go, yay, eternal life! And we don't see the context of Christ with Nicodemus. There's some really awesome theology in there.

But verses 14 through 16, he says, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him believes, will in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

So the question is, How has God loved us? And the answer is by sending His own Son. And I know that's not shocking, but if we're going to say what is the manifestation of this love, this list of love that we see in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the answer is the whole triune God was involved with sending the Son and planning that for our eternal salvation.

All right. So, reversing back into the proper order. Well, we'll skip the next part then, I guess, after that, so it's still improper, right? He says, being rich in mercy. And there's an important thing here. We need a definition, a working definition of mercy. And often growing up, I remember hearing, there was actually a Newsboy song, which says, when we don't get what we deserve, that's mercy, and when we get what we don't deserve, that's grace. Those are two very elementary definitions and they don't fit into the richness and the full context of the whole scriptures. What I was looking at when I was dealing with this is how do we define mercy?

I know that when I learned the definition I don't know if that's my phone or not. Anyways, when we learned the definition of grace being the unmerited, unlimited blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross, it was important because that definition changed our definition. I don't know what your working definition before that was, but I had to bulldoze mine and replace it with something that reflected the fullness of scriptures. What I tried to do here is, I first tried to look and see if I could find something that someone else had written so that it wasn't my work.

But I wanted to come up with a definition of mercy that reflected the fullness of what the scriptures write about mercy, but still be terse. So the working definition that I've got here is, mercy is God's disposition toward kindness, rooted in love, so that he may overlook sin while we're on the earth, due to Christ's adequate work on the cross.

And of course, you'll notice that there's a similar overlap with the definition of grace at the end, that the crux of mercy and the crux of grace are both in Christ's work on the cross. But I think it's important for us to not just see mercy as God choosing not to punish us for sins, but it's a disposition rooted in love toward kindness. And so God by his innate character and being has dealt with that tension that we were talking about earlier between righteousness and love. This tension that was there is dealt with So for those of you who just arrived, we're in the middle of page two talking about God's mercy. So we have a working definition here of mercy that is rooted in Christ's work and it leads us to grace. Mercy inherently leads us to grace. God doesn't stop at mercy and our relationship with him does not just stop at mercy. One thing that's important to recognize is that while grace is eternal, we're going to see in verse 7 that grace is eternal.

Mercy is temporal, or temporary, and we are not called to grow in it. Peter writes, hey, grow in grace. He doesn't say grow in mercy. It's entitlement. Growing in mercy. Growing in mercy is actually the attack that often, when you hear people who are Lordship Salvation, their attack is that people, they think we're saying grow in mercy, and that is simply not what we're saying. But mercy is temporary. God will not show us mercy into eternity. But as verse 7 will look at, God is going to show us grace into eternity.

And so that's a powerful thing. So Paul, in this little fragment, being rich in mercy, Paul says that God is rich. And so we should take a look at God's richness. God's wealth is something that we find outlined in a few different ways. We find that his riches are infinite. So that's not stunning, I hope, for anybody in the room. But God's riches are infinite. a God of scarcity. And I've got some cross-references there so you can double-check my work, but that's not an exhaustive list.

I just stopped there because I thought, okay, we have, I think if you look those up we can prove that God is rich and his richness comes with generosity. And the second thing there is that when we look through the letters we find that Paul writes about this richness being expressed with different attributes or characters of God.

He's a richness of mercy here, a richness of wisdom and knowledge in Romans 11.33, a richness of grace in Ephesians 1.7, which we've already been over in this series, a richness of glory and empowerment and strength of the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 3.16, which we'll get into. a richness of material supplies, in Philippians 4.19, and a richness of hope, in Colossians 1.27. So God is not just rich, He is rich and generous. And He is rich and generous not just in one thing, but in many things.

And that expresses the fullness of His character. We may not have that in our flesh, right? We're still growing and being conformed to His image, but those are part of His character. That as we're conformed, we're going to be part of those expressions. And since God does not hoard his riches, we see that we are his benefactors. And I think that's a powerful expression of his love. I've got this phrase here, there is no scarcity in God. This is kind of a theme that God has put into 2018 for me, is the idea of scarcity.

What does the world tell us about and what does Satan tell us about life? He's always talking about scarcity. The world is always talking about scarcity. Marketing is often scarcity. Whether it's cars or phones or some other it product that you've got to have, there's always a scarcity. Better get it now. The irony is that there are only a few things I can think of where there's really scarcity. And most of it is stuff that you probably don't directly interact with in your life. But we all have a scarcity in the number of our days. We know that's a scarcity thing.

But there's no scarcity in God. And it's important for us to see here that God is rich in mercy and there is no scarcity of His mercy. There's no scarcity of his mercy because it's rooted in the very nature of who he is in love. And so that's a powerful thing. Also, it makes me think how God in a whole lifetime, he continues to give us mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy.

Yeah. All the way through. I mean, and it's like, you know, I mean, if you were a parent, as an example, and you had a child who continued to act out or not do the right thing. I mean, eventually, you know, you go, you know what? You're on your own. I mean, you got to figure it out at some point. Yeah, if you're 40 years old, and I'm still supporting you. You got to figure it out.

Yeah, but God, it doesn't matter. I mean, a whole lifetime, he will just keep just like he did with the Jews. Yeah, constant. I mean, all those years, never gave up on him. Loving them even when they were, as he says, in harlotry, he loved them nonetheless. And for us, I think it's important for us to recognize that.

When we feel shame for sin that we've done, part of that is the flesh saying, oh, you have a righteousness problem, you're short, and what if God is not merciful? Surely he's going to run out of mercy for you because you keep screwing up. And that has no place in the Christian's theology. It has a place in our minds when we let it, but it doesn't have a place in our theology when we look at what the scriptures teach.

So God is rich in mercy. And God's richness is infinite. So his mercy towards us is infinite as well. So we kind of answered this next question already, but I think it's worth asking. Why is it critical that God be rich in mercy? We're full of sin. We're full of sin.

And what I think is amazing, let's take a brief look at Romans 11.32. So if you've got your Bibles or whatever, let's jump over there and let's read. Romans 11 has got a lot of interesting things in it. I was inclined to want to spend more time and more verses in Romans 11, but we'll just read 32 for the sake of tercity here.

For God has shut up all in disobedience so that he may show mercy to all. And on the surface, the idea of being shut up in disobedience sounds like, oh no, this is terrible. Except for that by having an equal and even judgment, we're all shut up in disobedience. But the consequence of that is so that he can show mercy. And it's important for us to recognize, and this isn't in the notes here, but I think I should state it.

In the Old Testament, God is merciful as well. We see God's wrath poured out against Canaan. When Israel disobeys God, He sends them out of the land. He promised them He would. But He's merciful to them. He preserves. There's always a remnant. He is merciful. because their response is by faith, just like ours is.

But it's critical for God to be rich in mercy, because otherwise the rest of his character is violated, because otherwise the opportunity for our salvation is negated. So Paul continues, he says, even when we were dead in our transgressions, and as we talked in the last several weeks, the Easter Sunday. What is death? How are we defining death? Separation. Death is separation. So when we were separated in our transgressions, we had been separated from God.

We were under Adam and we were shut up, as Romans 11.32 says, we were shut up in disobedience.

But even when we were dead in our transgressions, God did something. He made us alive together with Christ. And so this is one of several parallel passages that talks about the identification truths, which is why I'm so glad that you're here this morning, because I was super excited to get to teach this passage. Of course, this whole book is full of richness. We were dead in transgression, so death was separation, but we've been made alive or reconnected with God, together with Christ.

Christ's work was once and for all. He paid for all the sins of everyone who was a believer before that. Old Testament saints, all their sins paid for. Were they identified with Christ? This is a New Testament teaching. This is for New Testament saints.

So it's a powerful thing that it says we are made alive together with Christ. We were separated before in death but we're united through identification and the separation was gone, replaced by a union that was not before present in Adam and the garden.

How many of you have heard someone say, oh we're going back to the garden? as believers. You'll never hear it here at Holly Hills, praise the Lord. But that's not uncommon. I've heard people say, oh, we're going back to the garden. Was Adam identified with Christ? No. He was made in Christ's image, right? We should go back kicking and screaming. I would revolt, please no. We're going a new direction. We're made in his image in a new way. So we're not going back to the garden. Adam was not identified with Christ. Adam was not filled with the Holy Spirit. So we have some New Testament truth that we know now that takes us a different direction. So we're alive together with Christ. And whose life are we living anyways?

Galatians 2.20. Who can recite that off the top of their head? Anyone?

I'm crucified with Christ and nevertheless I live, but not I, but Christ lives in me. Well I like the next verse too. Separate it. That next verse, because of Christ, if we're saved by works, then Christ died in vain. That's so powerful, when you put those two together. helps you understand.

Verse 21, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly. But instead, righteousness comes through Christ in His work. So, it's the life of Christ that we are receiving. Something that is grander and much greater than just being joined and united with Him, but empowered by Him.

So then we have, how many of you have your Bibles, you have a parenthesis around this next fragment, by grace you've been saved. And I think that's kind of funny because it's one of those things where the translators were like, how do we translate Paul's huge, so this is the second longest sentence in the New Testament, is this passage here in chapter two. When you think of the exactitude that they used for King James as an emoticon after the word saved, think about it. You'll find out it's really true for the surrounding verses. But it's a long run-on sentence and this is part of Paul's thought here.

Sometimes you see parentheses and you think, oh that was unnecessary. I've been told when I'm writing, this is in, I can't remember which class it was, if you're writing, if it's a parenthetical, consider not putting it in there at all. I think it's a slight disservice to the reader to put it in parentheses that way because it makes you go, well was this in the original? Why is this?

No, it's in there, it's part of Paul's longer thought, and as Tom said, it makes sense in the context of what he's given there. but by grace you've been saved. So salvation is something done for us and we simply receive the gift of salvation through God's planned, executed, and perpetual blessing through grace. And the idea that we're saved by grace is not shocking here.

At Holly Hills, if you come in for the first time, maybe it's shocking, but we've got a class of folks who have been here for at least a while. I think the shortest amount of time anybody's been here is Abby. And she's 15. The thing is that folks have been around Holly Hills for a long time. We hear that and we're not shocked by it. But the flesh is shocked by it.

When you hear the gospel and you hear about grace, it's shocking. And it's life-changing. When we go upstairs in the next hour, we're going to hear about another one of Paul's missionary journeys getting started. And they want to go and make sure that God's grace is established in the churches. And that's a powerful thing.

By grace you've been saved. And we're going to talk about grace again in the next couple verses, so I'm not going to belabor that too much here, other than he keeps going on with the identification truths, and he says that God raised us up with Christ. So it would be one thing for it to be made alive, we're no longer separated, but it goes beyond that. So this idea of being deeply connected with Christ's resurrection is important.

In theological circles, and I went to seminary so maybe I care about this more than the average Joe, but in theological circles they talk about things being imputed. We have Christ's righteousness imputed to us is a thing I heard multiple times in theology circles. And I'm going to tell you right now that that word imputation is inadequate. Imputed means to have it accounted to your record. I have Christ's righteousness imputed to my record.

And that inadequately describes identification. If I just had Christ's righteousness moved from God's infinite Jesus righteousness account and they went into their accounting books and they flipped over and they finally got over to Randy Peterman and they were like, cha-ching, plus infinity Randy's righteousness. you know, minus infinity from Jesus' righteousness. Does that describe our identification?

That's terrible. And so there have been parts of me that would love to go back to seminary and go back to the circles and say, you don't get it. This is like, how about we sit down and we read Romans. You'd be thrown out. Well, I'm optimistic, but I wouldn't be surprised if that happened.

That's why we ended up dropping out of seminary in part because we were causing a disturbance. Because of various things. Anyways, this is not the venue for that. But the idea is that imputation is insufficient in describing what happened. And what we see instead is that if we were raised up with Him, what raised us up? God's power. It wasn't an accounting variation. The very power of God that could speak universes into existence, that could say and speak and decree all of creation, raised us up.

And that power as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1.18, is to those being saved is the power of God. It's the very power of who He is. God's authority is infinite and eternal and it is ultimate. There is no authority higher than His. And so when He says, raise them up, this is my son's bride, that's you, that's me, that's us together.

So we've been raised up with Christ. and made alive with Christ. And then, because Paul isn't done yet, he says that God has seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Beyond the miraculous identification with Christ in his life and his resurrection, we are identified with his seating in the heavenly places. And he doesn't say it here, but he says it in Colossians 3, where are we seated? At his right hand. We're at his right hand in Christ. The place of honor. Is there a place of honor higher than at the right hand of God the Father?

No. So the outcome of this relationship, this idea of being identified, is that our position is solidly and permanently and eternally seated with Christ in the heavenly places. And we're there together with Him. And it's outside of the confines of our earthly limitation. Our position and our condition are not unified yet, but they will be. We're looking forward to the time when those are joined up at death or rapture. Well, if we die, we'll be joined with Christ.

But when the rapture happens, we'll be joined as his bride. He's coming to get his bride. And I know I've used this joke before. I've never been a bride before, but I can't wait. The time is going to come that our position and our condition will be unified.

And then Paul continues, "...so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace." So what are the ages to come? Eternity. And what's cool is Paul uses ages to emphasize the eternal. He could have said the age to come. We would have still understood the same thing. But it's the ages to come. For as long as eternity is, which again for our minds is always a challenge, right? What is infinity? What's infinity plus one? I work in computer science. We have a special notation for infinity. It just lets you know that you've reached a number that your computer is going to throw up. It can't do infinity.

In the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches, again plural, not just age but ages, not just rich but riches, of his grace. And as we come around to grace again, it's important for us to understand that if our definition of grace is wrong, as we said earlier, and not everybody was here, if your definition of grace is just that we get what we don't deserve, that's insufficient.

This is grace that we're told while we're conditionally on this earth that we're supposed to grow in, 2 Peter 3.18. But instead, this idea is that we grow in grace. We don't grow in mercy. We do find that love continues and grace continues and we grow in grace. When my dad was teaching this upstairs, I don't know, years ago now, I remember him saying, this is not going to be redundant.

It's not going to be boring, same old, same old. How many of you have thought about heaven or you've seen it in the cartoons or comic strips where it's, oh, you know, we have a 24 hour day cycle in the heavenlies. where our bodies need sleep and we all get a good eight hours sleep maybe ten because you know there's no discouragement or stress in heaven. and there's no kids to wake you up and you sleep and then you get up and everything is happy and you put on your robe and you walk the streets of gold with your halo on, right? That's the comic book version of heaven and it is nowhere in the New Testament or the Old Testament.

Instead, we have this idea of being aware and awake and present with God forever and He is teaching us His grace forever. And that changes things. When we get to heaven, will we be complete and perfect? Right? I'm getting head nods. Yes. Will we know everything? Have the mind of Christ. Okay, but will we know everything? We're not going to know the infinite of everything and He's going to reveal truth to us that will be an expression of His grace and we'll continue to learn and grow.

And I think that's awesome because when we think about heaven and we think, okay, it's complete and perfect and redundant, well, that's not a very exciting heaven to look forward to. But when it's complete and perfect and yet there's growth and there's relationship development and there's fulfillment of things in an eternal state to where we find we're going to be in awe, that's a lot better.

I remember as a kid worrying about the food we'd have. Maybe you didn't, but for me that seemed important. Because my mom, I was allergic to wheat. My mom would make me rice cakes with peanut butter and jelly with rice cakes instead of bread. She's going to listen to this later on and she's shaking her head right now.

But the thing is that the idea of just eating one of those in heaven was like, nope, that can't be in heaven at all. There's going to be gluten and I'm going to love it. But I was really worried about food in heaven. Does the New Testament really talk about, or does the scripture really talk about food in heaven? It talks about feasts, marriage feasts and feasts like that. So there'll be food. I'm not worried about gluten intolerance or any of that stuff. That'll be awesome.

But as we look at eternity, it's easy for us to have a small, earthly mindset that has strange limitations. But Paul is writing here about this eternity and the ages to come where we're constantly going, and being in awe, and being surprised, and in anticipation of God revealing even more of himself to us. And that's important. The last fragment that we see here in Paul's writing is in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. If mercy is a disposition of kindness towards us despite our sins while on the earth, God has an eternal plan of kindness towards us due to our identification with Christ. As believers, have you noticed when you study God's Word that there's this crux of identification there? and we keep coming back to it.

I've talked to Mike Doyle about this, so what I'm about to say on the surface might sound like I'm saying something about Mike, but it's really about my immaturity. When we first moved here, I was very excited about identification truths. I didn't understand them. And then I grew in them and I was like, this is great. And then we were going to Mike Doyle's Bible study on Wednesday nights at the time. It was Wednesday nights, I don't know.

They've moved it a few times. And I started to think, Mike always comes back to the identification truths. It's like he's not teaching anything new. It doesn't matter where we are in God's word, he keeps going back to the identification truths. And I started to think, well, maybe I've just been to seminary, and maybe I've just learned all the things, and we've hit some kind of plateau, or maybe... And one day, because God is merciful, like we said, He's kind and disposed to kindness, He finally kind of hit me up the side of the head with the two-by-four of reality, and I realized that Mike wasn't doing something redundantly. or with repetition, we are forced by what is true of us in Christ to confront everything in light of that identification. So we go back to themes like grace, and mercy, and love, and identification, and the position that we have and condition, not because we're lazy as teachers, or we're lazy as students, but because that is the lens with which we view the New Testament. We have repetition of theme, not because Paul was only inspired to write a subset of what we needed, or Peter, or whomever the authors are in the New Testament. We have repetition because this was key New Testament doctrine that was vital for our very life in Christ.

And so when we see here, in Christ, At Holly Hills, that's normal. Hopefully at more churches it's normal. I pray that that doesn't stay here, because when I hear people say things only at Holly Hills, it reminds me of, and we don't want to have that kind of cult-like language, right? That's dangerous. But we hope that what is taught here in the New Testament, you don't find it boring and repetitive and redundant, but instead you find it invigorating and challenging.

And the same thing goes when you're out walking and talking. Margaret, you mentioned if you've got kids and when they're 40 and you're like, okay, eventually you need to get on. Hopefully, I turned 40 in September. I'm grateful to have been out of my parents' house for 20 years.

It's good. But the thing is that when we're parenting our children, we're going to re-confront them over and over with these things. It's important that we recognize this. So God's kindness towards us is not temporary. It's not temporal. Mercy is. But God's kindness through grace, his blessing towards us in grace, is eternal. It's not temporary.

So let's ask, this is the last question there at the bottom of that page. What's the second to last question? What about suffering? This is an important question. Oh, God's kindness towards us in Christ Jesus while I see suffering in the world. Is this about that? Is Paul talking about eternal kindness and spiritual kindness? Or is he talking about earthly kindness? It's heavenly kindness.

In fact, what we find In contrast to that, like if you read 1 Peter, I've talked through 1 Peter now a few times, and every time I teach through it, I'm just amazed because Peter undulates, if you will. He cycles between what an amazing position we have in Christ, and because of that, here's how you respond to suffering.

He even tells slaves, he goes, hey slaves, you know how this is really stinky and terrible? Be like Christ in front of your masters. So suffering? You're suffering as a slave? Fine. You have a context of Christ. Respond like Christ. Christ was the perfect example. He went to the cross and suffered completely. So when we seek kindness towards us in Christ Jesus, it's a spiritual and positional thing. He's not just talking about once you become a Christian, everything gets wonderful. The president you want gets voted in every time. Nobody commits crimes anymore. You always have money in the bank. Your kids are always healthy. Your car never breaks down.

I don't know where that rainbows and unicorns mindset about Christianity came from, but it's not in the New Testament. In a separate study I'm teaching through Philippians, and in Philippians chapter 4 Paul says, I've learned to be content in everything. When I have much, I'm content there, and when I have little, I'm content there.

Because he knows God will provide all his needs. So God's kindness is in this focus here, in Christ, it's about our relationship with him. It's not about rainbows and unicorns and sing Kumbaya. So in conclusion here, God's plan for those who believe has been from God's plan for those who believe has been from before the Earth's creation.

If we look at 1 Peter 1.20, God planned on these things in eternity past. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit knew that salvation was going to be needed. and they willed together collectively in love to bring redemption. That we may be recipients of God's love, that we may be recipients of His kindness, and recipients of His grace, and that grace into eternity, that we continue to grow in it. And we consider that all of time and space are part of His plan.

It is overwhelming with awe, hope, and glory. My youngest daughter's middle name is Hope, and I didn't actually think about what that word meant until we decided to name her Hope. I figured I'd better figure that out. Hope is our confidence in what God said he's going to do in the future. It's like faith applied forward. the hope we have is of this eternity of grace being poured out and teaching us, and our position and our condition identified with Him.

And then the last question that's on here, which is frankly impossible to answer, so I'm not looking for an answer, but it's something to meditate on, is how much do we have to learn about God's grace due to His love and mercy? And the answer is infinity, right? He's going to, for the rolling ages to come, be showing His grace to us as a consequence of His love and mercy. So we managed to go all the way into eternity past, all the way into eternity future in one lesson. Thank you for enduring that. Any other thoughts or questions? Things you wish I had said or hadn't said? Alright, let's close in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we come before you. We're so grateful for who we are in Jesus Christ. that while we were dead in our transgressions, you chose to send your son that we may be alive in him, raised up in him, and seated in the heavenlies in him. We thank you so much for your life and we pray that we may be an example of that in manifesting who you are to the world around us. We pray for opportunities to share the gospel and to be lights that we may encourage others with these truths in the body and we thank you that you promised the return of Jesus and that we get to look forward to that. We pray it would be imminent and soon and that we might not even make it to the second hour. We just thank you in Jesus name. Amen.