Crucified with Christ - Part 1

As Bob said last week, we're going to be going over Galatians 2.20, at least in part, this morning. He said that both he and Roger might have had biblical jealousy. And the truth of the matter is that because of the weight of this passage, I've actually been spending a lot of time over the last several weeks Just meditating on this passage and studying. No pressure though. I hope to do it justice is what it comes down to. Galatians, we've gotten past primarily the historical parts of chapters 1 and 2, and now we're getting into some meaty theology.

When I was looking at this, I began to really think about what is the greater context for Galatians 2.20, because here we have Paul, and let's, if you've got your Bibles, and I hope you do, let's open there to Galatians 2, and starting in verse 19, Paul says, For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly."

So 19, and of course you went over this last week, hopefully everyone was here. I wasn't, but I was able to listen to the MP3 online. the law required that we die, basically. And so with that, we have to take a look at the principle of crucifixion and our identification with that. What I wanted to do is actually start back in Genesis, if you will. Bear with me for a moment.

I've got here on the handout, hopefully everybody has their handout, on the first page you'll see a very large table. And the first column is Adam and Eve before the Fall. The second column is Adam and mankind after the fall. The third column is Christ. And the fourth column is the believer. And I wanted to just kind of take a look at the scope and differences between the four different columns that are there, just to kind of prepare us for taking a look at being crucified with Christ.

So the first row in that column is that Adam, when he was created by God, his spirit was alive. Okay, so we have Adam in this state when God breathed life into this dirt clod. Maybe that's a little too negative. But when he breathed life into Adam, who had formed out of the dust, his spirit was alive. And so, for a while, Adam and then Eve, when she was taken from his side, were alive.

But, then the fall happens and man's spirit is dead. Now what does that mean for the spirit to be alive and what does it mean for the spirit to be dead? How about this? What is death? Death is separation. But the spirit is how we interact with God. It is the part of us that interacts with God and so by the spirit being dead that means that the interaction with God was severed. Christ's Spirit was alive, obviously, being the Son of God and being God Himself. His interaction with the Fathers through the Spirit was absolutely there. And as believers, our Spirit was alive. Are you shaking your head?

Well, no, it's just that, you know, I view the Lord Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man, but until the Spirit was indwelled in the River Jordan baptism, the ministry didn't really begin. I mean, because he's fully God and fully man, the spirit was part of him. I mean, he was never separated from the triune God, but in a sense, I mean, that pneuma in the Greek, you know, well, it's man-spirit in addition to God's. I mean, that same Greek term is used for spirit. So, when the spirit was dead in Adam, how do you interpret that in relationship to the spirit being a Alive in Christ? Well, that's a little different because he's God-man.

You must admit, the true ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ began at the River Jordan at the baptism, right? Well, it doesn't seem that way because when he was a 12-year-old In the temple, he was still teaching. Oh, he was fully God. He knew all things. How many miracles, how many casting out of demons, and how many healing the sick did you see before the baptism of the Holy Spirit? There's a big space in time that we really don't have a recording of his teenage years. God's revealed, but he wanted us to know.

Yeah, and so there's part of that. Tom? Well, you could say that from eternity past up until the time Jesus had his baptism, Jordan He was in continuous, unbroken fellowship with the Holy Spirit. But, as man, he had something new and interesting when the Holy Spirit came upon him. And you could honestly say, at that point, he had a different ministry that he didn't have before because of this. Yeah. It was definitely different at that point in time. There is definitely a junction. Junction at the unction. But all men were accountable before God from Adam going forward, right? Oh, absolutely.

And we're going to go, as we go through the rows here, basically this is an overview of things so that when we get into the crucifixion, no, it's all right. At least I know that if we're all thinking, we're asking questions that are going to lead to where hopefully we've got some answers because we're thinking along the lines of truth. And the believer's spirit is alive in Christ, Scriptural references for most of these squares. Please feel free to go into those for the sake of time We won't but double-check me be like the Bereans The second row here the life Included fellowship with God.

So not only was the spirit alive, but with that came fellowship with God Genesis 2 7 says that God was there and breathed life into Adam and then communicated their story of Genesis communicates fellowship and relationship And then in Genesis 3.6, God comes walking in the garden to have fellowship with Adam and Eve, and they're hiding. So up until that point, there's fellowship, and then the fall happens, and God is still communicating with them, but you can see at the point of the fall that there is a collapse of some quality of the relationship. At the fall, death is broken, or I should have probably said death has broken fellowship, not death is broken fellowship. Well, death is broken fellowship, it could be both. In Christ, life is union with God. So it's not just fellowship with God, but because of the Trinity, life is union with God. And in the Believer, life is hidden with Christ.

Colossians 3.1, actually it's 1-3 there, tells us that our life is hidden with Christ.

So the principle of life and fellowship is important to understand. No knowledge of good and evil prior to the fall. Adam didn't have knowledge of good and evil. And I think that's an important thing for us to understand. He did have a simple law. What was the simple law that God gave Adam before the fall? Not eat of the tree. Don't eat of these two trees. That's it. And otherwise he was just the caretaker of the garden. I mean, if you consider all of the work that mankind does, it is very complex in contrast to the simplicity of responsibility.

Couldn't Adam and Eve eat of the Tree of Life though? After they ate from the Tree of Life? You know, you're going to ask me that? You're going to ask me that, and I'm going to have to say, I've got to go back here and look. It was just one tree. Yeah, the tree of life was capable of being eaten. God opened the door for them to have a choice when he said of all trees. Except for that one. So, good question. Just in case that wasn't obvious in the recording, it does just say the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Christ had a knowledge of good and evil. After that, Adam and Eve had a knowledge of good and evil. Christ obviously had a knowledge of good and evil as God. He had that knowledge in a different way than mankind does. And as believers, conditionally, we have a knowledge of good and evil.

I believe when we get to heaven, when we have our new body in the new heavens and earth, or in the new heavens, where that knowledge is not going to come with a tainted will, which is part of the corruption of mankind. Adam, before the fall, had no need of salvation. Adam, afterward, needed salvation and was condemned by the law and conscience.

So after the law was given, there was a condemnation, but even before the law was given, the conscience was still there. What does the knowledge of good and evil mean as far as they didn't have a law, but they still knew what was good and evil? Does that mean that they're still condemned? That's the problem before you have the law, you still have God saying that there's condemnation. The conscious, this knowledge of good and evil, means that man was still condemned by the works that were there.

There was still a knowledge of those things. Yeah, I mean Romans to get to the point. 12, for as many as have sinned without the law shall so perish without the law, as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law. I mean, there's a principle of being separated from God by the sin nature that ultimately, I mean, Romans wanted to kind of outline that conscience aspect. Yeah, and that's the thing that's important is to recognize that the conscience still bore witness against man. If you know good and you know evil, you have that distinction.

You have no argument. You can't come to God and say, well, you didn't say I couldn't do that. You can't send me to hell. I didn't do wrong because I knew it was wrong. Yes, you did. You had a conscience. It's all up to you. There is a responsibility there.

I love it when people will talk with me and say, I don't believe that sin really exists. So you have one conversation where sin, I don't believe sin exists, and then your conversation will drift to something else, usually because they don't really want to talk about spiritual things. And let's say you bring up politics, or you bring up global warming, or some kind of issue that is a current event issue, there is a sense of awe, there is a sense of righteousness And lack of righteousness, since they won't use the word sin. You've got to have this unrighteous thing.

But you can't use the word sin, because they don't believe in that, right? So anyways, the conscience bears witness against man. Obviously, Christ did not need salvation. He was the way through which salvation would come. And as a believer, we do not need positional salvation, although conditionally we are being saved. We are in the process of being saved.

This is an oversimplified chart. There's probably a hundred different places I put asterisks to clarify things, but for the sake of this. This chart is a three-year Sunday School class. It could very well be that, yeah. Well, that's Galatians 2.20. It's definitely one of those verses where there's a lot of theology tied in with it. Adam was not a slave to sin before the fall, but after the fall he was a slave to sin. Obviously Christ was not a slave to sin, and as believers we are not slaves to sin.

Of course that's a major part of what Galatians 2.20 is going to go over, is the fact that we are not slaves to sin. Alright, so we talked about mankind needing salvation.

Christ could not have died any other way but upon the cross of Calvary because of prophecy. It was prophesied that he would die on the cross. But also, it was done with a purpose. That prophecy didn't just come because God said, I'm going to have somebody die on the cross. It was, I'm going to have someone die on the cross, this is in the Old Testament prophesying forward, because I have a purpose, and this person is going to do something significant.

And so, Christ was prophesied, In the very first, when we talked about the fall in Genesis 3.15, when Evos told that one of her seed will crush the head of the serpent.

And as we look through the order of scripture, we can go read Psalm 22. In fact, if somebody would open their Bibles to Psalm 22, everyone can open their Bibles to Psalm 22. Let's take a look at some of these verses. I hate to say it, but I'm so used to using my computer for Bible study stuff that I'm slow at finding things in my paper. Psalm 22, let's take a look at verses 1 and 2.

Would somebody mind reading that out loud for us? Why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me? And from the words of my groaning, O my God, I cried in daytime, but you do not hear, and in the night season, and in God's silence. Psalm 22, 7 and 8, he says, All who see me sneer at me. They separate with the lips. They wag the head, saying, Commit yourself to the Lord. Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him, because he delights in him. and then 15, my strength is dried up like a pop shirt and my tongue cleaves to my jaws and you lay me in the dust of death.

And 17 and 18, I count all my bones, they look, they stare at me, they divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots. So we have a prophecy of this detailed suffering servant. Isaiah 53, the whole chapter is a prophecy of the suffering serpent who is going to pay for the price of sin for the nation of Israel. Frankly, there is a tremendous number of prophecies and we could spend an entire class or a series of classes going over the prophecies of the Messiah. Nobody has ever explained to me exactly what they get out of the statement when Christ says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

As though he didn't know it was going to happen? How does that fit in here? Well, Tom has something he wants to answer that way. Go for it. Christ did not experience being a human being until he became human in the flesh through the incarnation. That was something new. And from that moment on, everything coming across him as Jesus as man was new stuff to him being personally experienced. Even though he had put together the blueprint in creating God the Holy Spirit, God the Father had blessed him and he said my God to the Father and my God to the Holy Spirit. This was something new that he'd never experienced in the Eternity past.

That was just a mark of his humanity. Yeah. It hit him like more than just a ton of bricks. I've never heard that explanation before. When scripture says that he became like sin for us. That is Him taking on the sins of the world and being separated from God and dying. It's a fellowship. It's a big deal.

I mean, if you think about that in all of history, going back to Genesis 1-1 and then moving forward, here is a moment in time where God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are, because of the consequence of sin, separated. It's a prior to the beginning of the earth. It's for all eternity. Well, yeah, but I'm saying this is one moment in all, yeah, thank you for that clarification.

But as far as our comprehension of time, this was a big deal. And in an eternal perspective, this is an even bigger deal. Randy? Yeah. Also, it's, you know, in the Gospels it says that Jesus kept saying, I and the Father are one. And that means covenant relationship as well as trinity relationship. And so you're exactly right.

I think when the sin came upon him, the sins of the world, it said that God could not look upon him. And so this covenant relationship, this eternal, as you said, before the beginning of the world, forever, it was broken. And death is the same thing. Death was the same thing for Christ. I mean, dying was a human thing.

And it resulted because of the separation and because of the sin. And until you grasp how bad sin is to God, you would not understand why Christ says that. God cannot look on a sin, much less all the sins of the world. It was just that one sin of eating, and he said, this is inadequate. And actually, we're right now, the next thing I wanted to go over is this issue, and I just love it. Really, honestly, it's not where I feel like, oh, we're getting ahead of the lesson. It just tells me we're right where we need to be.

Death was not an intended occurrence in the creation plan given by God. It doesn't mean that God didn't foreknow it, but it was not His intended plan. So, if death is not part of God's plan, God had to make a plan to deal with that. Of course, this was an eternity past that He was already preparing for that. But God created man in His image, knowing that His Son was going to be taking on this form of man. He already knew that this was going to take place. So the way that our bodies look and operate, granted genetics and over time things like the flood changes the body, there is a uniqueness to this body that he knew his son was going to take on.

Bob, you looked like you were going to say something. Well, I'm just scared the skeptics think this is ridiculous. Oh, absolutely. I think they're ridiculous too. I mean, this sounds just hermeneutical. Sure. And the skeptic has no answer for where we came from, but they know it's not the Bible. You know, the skeptic says, I don't know, but I know it's not that. So instead of actually saying, I don't know, they say, I kind of know, but they won't say that.

That's really cool. They have a desire. It has to be suppressed. It's the truth, but they want to suppress it. We see that in neon lights in our world. I want to suppress that. I want to suppress that. I keep running into this. There is a very strong atheistic agenda to not only suppress which is biblical.

This last week for some reason I found myself on Wikipedia and they actually were talking, I was looking up something about cosmology not related to this class, but it just blatantly said creation myths. Just everything that is related to creation is a myth factually. That is how it is treated. This is factually a myth we know it is a myth.

Absolutely. Now, can you prove the Big Bang Theory? Absolutely not. Cannot. But it is not a myth, it's a theory and it might be reliable. So, I mean, the world hates the truth of the creation account. It hates the idea of being created in God's image. It hates the idea that we would need saving. That is really offensive.

So, we have this problem We'll keep moving forward just for the sake of the class because we've only got two weeks to cover Galatians 2.20.

Life for Adam came implicitly with a relationship with God, and death brought about separation and corruption of the life principles that were part of being created in God's image because of the fall of Adam. Since Jews and Gentiles were both through the line of Adam, Jews and Gentiles both needed the sacrificial work of Christ on the cross prior to the New Testament. So the Jews and Gentiles needed some kind of way to cope with sin. Now how did they cope with sin? What's the biblical way?

Atonement. Did sacrifices justify them? No. It covered it. It was an outward sign of something that wasn't going to come. So how were they saved? By faith. Saved by faith. This was adequate before God. That's all he revealed at that point. Adam and Eve, by taking by faith those skins that they were covered with and believing God in the promises he said he was going to send someone who would crush the head of the serpent, by faith were believing in God and were saved.

They weren't saved by works. They could never be saved by works. They'd already lost any opportunity of obedience being part of their life with Christ or life with God. And so We have this critical thing with the skins that took place with Adam and Eve.

The first thing is that the skins were assigned to hide the shame and that sin would always come with the cost of death. And that God would be the only one who could bring about a final solution because man was incapable of providing a permanent sacrifice. God did the first non-PETA act. You know, PETA is all about ethical treatment of animals. God killed the first animal and gave the skins to Adam and Eve to cover themselves, to deal with that shame. And as an outward sign of the separation that they had with God due to the sin.

I'm going to not tell the story I was going to tell here because... Too much of a rabbit trail. It was too much of a rabbit trail. That's right. But if we consider this problem of sin, and looking around the room, we are all clothed, which is culturally a good thing, but we are all clothed, and that to us is normative, but it would not have been had Adam and Eve not sinned, or Adam not sinned. And it wouldn't be awkward, such a conversation like that now, it's kind of like, ooh, First World America, that's really awkward to think about that when they say, if you're going to speak publicly, imagine people in their underwear or something like that. But sin brought about a need for clothing that was not there. So mankind has always had this outward sign of this need for salvation and this crucifixion was required.

When the Jews get to the law, how is it that the law is used? Is it used for justification? Does the law ever justify it? But it's used for sanctification. It set Israel aside from the world. But it's there. So, basically, in the end, we've set up the very real need for crucifixion. Christ had to die on the cross.

But God decided to do something, and as we keep an eye on Galatians 2.20, Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. So we have the need, but then that need would have just fulfilled dealing with the consequence of sin. It would have been just propitiation if it was just Christ dying. If Christ had just died for the sins of the world, it would have been propitiation, but God decided to do something beyond that and identify us with his Son so that we could have propitiation and the newness of life.

And that's where Galatians 2.20 comes in and radically changes our perspective of this crucifixion.

How many of you, when you were new believers, read this and you thought, this cannot be talking about me? You read Romans 6. For me, over and over again, I read Romans and I thought, man, Paul must have had this really weird spiritual relationship with God where he could identify himself with Christ, because surely He wasn't talking about me. Because I still wanted to sin, so this must not have been... And no one ever explained it to me. I didn't understand this crucifixion in the context of God's bringing life back into the picture. Tom? You're absolutely dead on.

When I asked for a Bible as a Christmas present when I became 10 years old, I felt, maybe not for the same exact reasons, but I was sure it was culpable and defective in my understanding at that time. And the thing is that as a person who is a believer but uneducated, I was a babe in Christ for much longer than you would expect a human baby to stay a baby, I was not able to look at this and fathom a relationship with God. I always found something separating myself from God by my condition, not understanding the positional aspect of this identification.

We'll keep moving forward here. Had the perpetuation been all that came from the cross, mankind would still not be entitled to an eternal relationship with God on an intimate level. But God desired a deep relationship with mankind and instead chose to identify us, the church, with a sum on the cross. So that he would also identify us with Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and seeding. Now that's what we call those the identification truths, right?

And there's an entire series of classes that have been recorded, and you're welcome to listen to those. I co-taught some of them. Bob? You know, it also gives the Lord's Table a whole new perspective, I mean, in terms of what we go through, because If I am the bread of life and we're one in Christ and have been crucified with him, then when we take the bread, we look at the sin nature as being crucified. And the cup is the sins being forgiven, but the bread is the crucifixion of the flesh and being co-crucified. And so this is foundational Christianity.

It's absolutely essential that you understand this principle. It's so important. Yeah, and that's where looking at this identification and the consequences of identification, it was 20 years of life, I was about 20 years old when my dad started to present these things to me, because he had just had them presented to him, that I just wrestled with the flesh and that's all I knew. That was normal. I was wrestling with the flesh and not really knowing that I had a way outside of just being determined in the flesh to not sin, which fails every time. I think we all know that. But this identification was a big deal. The identification was not just in the death, and I think that the crucifixion was there, the death was there.

If we take a look at Romans 6, let's turn our Bibles there, Paul outlines in I consider Galatians 2, 19, 20, and 21 to be a paraphrased version of Romans 6. That's the summary, and Romans 6 gives us a longer, more drawn out and enunciated version of the doctrine. So let's take a look at starting in verse 1. Bob, would you mind reading 1-7?

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Let it not be. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer in it? Know ye not that as many of us were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death, therefore were buried by him by baptism unto death. And Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we had been planted together in the likeness of his death, we should be also in the likeness of his resurrection. and that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.

So when Paul tells us in Galatians 2.20, I've been crucified with Christ, he's talking about not just being crucified, but also resurrected, died and buried and resurrected. And Colossians 3 tells us also that we're seated with Christ in the heavenlies. And it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

And so we have here this principle of life that is not bound to sin. Romans 6 obviously goes into those things. I'm going to read 6.11. We're going to skip 7 through 10 there. Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. In the King James, I believe the word is reckoned. reckon yourself dead.

And that principle of reckoning we're going to spend a lot more time next week going over because that ties in with the second half of Galatians 2.20. So I just wanted to preface this next section with that so that you would say, hey, where does reckoning fit into this? It does. We're going to get there.

Paul continues on to say that it is no longer he who lives but Christ who lives in him. This message cannot be overstated. The life of Christ is the life that should be the one that we are conscious of as believers and the one that others see when they watch us live on the earth.

When I said I didn't understand being crucified with Christ, I also didn't understand being alive with Christ. I certainly couldn't understand the latter if I didn't understand the former. But when Paul was talking about newness of life, when Paul was talking about this liberation from sin, I had no idea how that could possibly be. I didn't understand identification.

So we want to take a moment to just consider the depths of where identification takes us. If death is separation from God, then we need to encourage one another with the idea that eternal life is union with God. One of the things that I came across as I was meditating over this passage is that I had a good working definition of death. Death is separation. When I asked what is death, everyone almost unanimously said death is separation.

But I didn't have a good working definition of life. We've had discussions with the different teachers that I've taught in this class, and Bob has said it numerous times, it's not a choice, it's a life. And it's one of those things where I didn't have a good working definition of life.

So Bob would say that, and I could say, okay, I agree, technically. But that has a deeper meaning to me as I've been studying and thinking about newness of life compared to previously. So this has been a good study for me to have a deeper understanding of statements like that. So as believers we need to encourage one another with the fact that we have union with God and this life that is there.

Sam? I think it's also interesting that at that time, obviously before Christ was raised, the Sadducees didn't believe in life hereafter. Other people had a concept of what it might mean to have a life hereafter. But it hadn't existed, at least in an eternal state.

If you go to 1 Peter 3.18, I think this fits in very well.

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. And it says, He was put together in the body, but made alive by the Spirit. So what Paul's talking about is exactly that for everyone who has eternal life. It's the exact same process. Christ was brought to life by the Spirit. That's exactly what Peter's saying. That's exactly what happens in the identification process. After the dying, you're brought to life, not just by some miraculous event, which it is, but by the Spirit. Just like Christ was. And that's identification.

And the funny thing is that as a charismatic, this is again centered on my own experience so it's not universal, I was charismatic theologically. So I always was looking for the spirit, and I say that with air quotes because I really had a bad understanding of who the Holy Spirit was, I was always looking for the Holy Spirit to do something in my life. But I wanted something supernatural. I really honestly had no idea that he was the only way that I would be able to have victory over sin. Which is, to say it now, it's ridiculous. I want to go back and smack old Randy in the face. What do you think? How do you not draw these conclusions? It's here forever.

Well, I mean it relates to the fact that people who look for experiences to prove God for who He is really have bad doctrine. Whereas when you have right theology and right doctrine, then the experiences are infinite. Because it's Christ in you, the hope of glory, that ultimately brings light unto darkness, right? And also with that, the big air, I hear a lot of times from a lot of different people, when they really don't understand scripture, they say, and who does fully?

But when they say that Christ really didn't die fully, He was just, you know, he never really died. He was in a catatonic state. Or whatever. So he did not actually go to the complete death process as man does. Like I said, it's air, big air. I've not heard that one, but that's pretty shocking. And without the Spirit. Who are you hanging out with Stan? My life has been very mixed. It's been a learning process. Opportunities for evangelism. Romans tells us in 6.4 that we're we were identified with his resurrection for a newness of life.

And that's where, coming back to Galatians 2.20, it says, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So that newness of life should be normative for us. Why is the newness of life not normative for many believers?

This should be an easy one. I think, first of all, because they have never identified with the burial of the flesh. And so, until you circumcise the flesh, and you truly die with Christ, you will never experience the newness of life through the Spirit. Well, I think some of them experience the death, but they don't identify with the risen Lord. Which would be the second step. Yeah, they just don't, they don't, I mean they absolutely can't get their brain around that that actually, that identification, I mean they may.

But why not? Why do we not reckon ourselves under the truths of 611? I don't know. Unless we all think we're worthy. The sin nature shows up whenever that reckoning by faith ceases. Our sin nature is remaining. And I've often said as the light gets brighter, that darkness is more revealed for what it really is. So it's simply because we're saved by faith, we're being saved by faith, and we will be saved.

This tripartite verb in terms of the tense is so critically important. And we're going to go over conditional sanctification. That's the next section, because I think that's really where we have to go, is we have to say, okay, he says I've got this new life, where does that come from? Tom, do you have a comment? Let's talk about sanctification. In the context of the life we have to look at positionally we know that that life is we're hidden with Christ we're seated in the heavenlies and we're positionally with Christ and God, so that is there. So then that leads us to bring out the conditional aspect of things. Our positional justification leads the way to conditional sanctification. God transforms us into the image of His Son.

Next week in the main service, my dad's going to be teaching 2 Corinthians 3.18. Bob, I'm sorry, you're going to miss it. Quite frankly, that's one of the most important things I have learned in the last six years of my life was actually at the Doyle's Bible Study we were having a question and answer time and I said, Mike, you keep talking about this beholding business, teach us about it, because I feel like I'm missing something.

And so we had one night at the Doyle's Bible Study and Mike just went over 2 Corinthians 3.18 and beholding. And I was so excited that the next four days later when I was teaching the Tuesday night Bible Study I had another, we were in another series and I said, guys this is so huge. I'm not going to teach my main lesson. We have got to go over beholding. It's really cool. So next week my dad will do that in more detail.

But the thing that is important is that if we look at 2 Corinthians 3.18, we'll see that there is a transformation, a conditional transformation that is reflective of our positional transformation.

Would somebody who's at 2 Corinthians 3.18 go ahead and read it out loud? But we all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Alright.

Now, I'm supposed to be expositing Galatians 2.20, but we're going to take a moment to chew on this, just because it is so critical in the context of Galatians 2.20. Okay, so the unveiled face has to do reference to Moses having been on Mount Sinai and having his face veiled because the children of Israel were freaked out that he was glowing. I can understand that on a certain level.

I don't normally see people walking around with glowing faces. But Paul comes and says to us that just like Moses, we are beholding the Lord. and there is no veil. We are beholding the Lord. We are looking at him as though through a mirror because we are positionally and conditionally separated or not the same.

But we're being transformed and this transformation I think is probably one of the key doctrines that I wish I could get more MacArthurite legalists to understand. How many of you have seen works-based judgment over and over again, where if they would understand transformation and progressive sanctification, the concept that we're growing over time, then I can come right alongside somebody who's being carnal, who is a believer, and say, I know you're in the manure, you're wallowing in it, it's stinky here, and I can direct them to heavenly things. and not just say, oh that person's carnal, they're probably not safe. They're in the process of being transformed. They're not done conditionally.

This is not an intellectual argument though, is it? You have to come to accept the facts for what they are. But when you try to intellectualize this truth, there's just no power there, is there? Well, no. The basic intellectual seed of it, principle, is easy to grasp. But the application of it is broad and is personal. But don't you sense that to come to this understanding, number one, and see it be revealed in your life, not by self-examination, but just in terms of being lifted up by the power of the Lord, is a person who's come to the end of themselves and has a hungry heart? Oh, absolutely.

You're not going to be beholding unless you're hungry. And that's part of it, is that I've never met somebody who's carnal who wanted to be beholding. I've met a lot of people who are carnal who said they were frustrated with where they were at and I could give them the opportunity to recognize that they were identified with Christ and His death. And then, once they start to understand that, then the Holy Spirit works and makes them hungry.

But it is that identification stuff, that identification stuff, the identification truths, that's going on the internet. I'm not going to ask you to edit that out. You've got to explain that. Understanding the identification truths allows me to understand hunger, but it also gives me... It also gives me, and this is one of the things that are further on, it gives me something to grow by. Now are the identification truths things that we've just come up with on our own, or where are they from? They're from the Bible. God has revealed these things to be true of us. He's given us the supernatural revelation.

One of the things that... Back in the day, Mike used to lead the service on occasion, and he read something, I think it was out of The Hungry Hearts, and it has just resonated with me for as long as... I mean, that morning it was like a ton of bricks, in a good way. But he read and he said that spiritual growth happens when we believe what is already true of us.

And that's such a simple statement and yet when Paul here in Galatians says to us that it's not I who live but Christ who lives within me, I had to have God reveal to me grace so that I could understand what living in grace was. I had to have God reveal to me the the identification truths, so that I could understand that I could even live in them. If someone doesn't tell you, hey, you died to sin, explicitly, what's your logical conclusion? How do you live, then, if you haven't died to sin? You're in the flesh trying to battle sin. You've got to work at it.

So this revelation from God through Paul and Peter and the various authors of the New Testament allows us to live out this new life and learn and grow. There's a couple aspects that for me have been very liberating. One is that Grace is unlimited and unmerited, so I can stop trying to work because I'll never merit it. I'll never exhaust grace. The other thing that is part of that is it also allows me to understand that I'm growing, my wife is growing, my children are growing, and that growth is a pretty substantial way to look at someone.

If I have a problem with a believer, and I wouldn't have any problems with anybody in this room, but let's say there's a hypothetical believer I'm having a problem with. If I understand that they're in the process of sanctification, my coping mechanism isn't the flesh. I see Christ, and I see His work, and I see His reconciliation. If my coping mechanism is the flesh because I don't understand they're in the process of sanctification, and Lord knows I'm in the process of sanctification, then I come in and it's like butting heads over and over again because the flesh doesn't bring reconciliation. God brings reconciliation.

So this newness of life that he's writing about, Christ lives in him, and so we have to ask ourselves, with Christ living in us, what does that look like to the outside world? We know what it looks like in the body because we see it. I see it, at least. When I see it in the body, it often shows up in needs, and watching those needs get fulfilled in amazing ways.

God always turns it up to 11. It's amazing. This is a silly illustration, but every morning that I walk into the foyer there, there's a ramp. And that ramp, in my mind, is just a giant sign of love. It's a walkway. If I go into any other building, it's a law, it's a code that the government sets aside and says, well, you have to have handicapped accessibility if your building was built from such and such a time.

But we saw needs. And the deacons said, we have got to love these brothers and sisters in Christ and get them into the sanctuary with no effort so that they know that we love them. It's the life of Christ inside the church. But what does it look like outside the church? What do they see? Tom? Second reading. Oh, okay. I've only got one reading. So we'll conclude here and wind up. But what does it look like outside the church? What do they perceive? Randy? Yeah.

I personally think that if it was truly being lived out to its fullest as the scripture teaches, you wouldn't be able to have room for the entire world to come and seek what they see in the churches. But the problem we have today is that, just almost like in England, where churches have basically become dysfunctional, and people don't even desire to go there because they don't see what you're talking about here. So that's why I keep saying that there's more to it than just understanding the concepts. Obviously, it's the living out of the concepts in your life and through your example to other people.

To me, the tree of knowing good and evil is a picture of the law. When Adam ate of that, he was convicted and he died. When Paul understood the law, it taught him covetousness and he died. And so, it's the same thing. And so Adam was stuck with knowing his sin and then trying to overcome that.

And he did it through a sacrificial system until Christ came. This is to be its own class. I think every time we see a governmental action to bring about social change, it's reflective of a place where the church has abdicated its role and stepped down. Welfare should not exist in a Christian nation because the church is the welfare system.

Acts 2 tells us about these people who came in and, you have need? Well, here. We have some friends in Texas that we got to see on our last trip and I thought, they have a need. And Jessica and I, having hours driving, which we hear in Texas, talked about what ways could we be stewards of our resources to hopefully help them in their needs.

I don't say that to toot my own horn, because that's not my intent. But other than, it just is, as a believer, it is the way that I see Christ working in the body holistically. But the world doesn't understand that. They can't fathom that. They're always going to try to misappropriate or misdefine those actions as they come about. In closing on that topic, Romans 12 gives us an image of that. You can take some time looking at that if you choose to.

We're going to continue on next week and we're going to talk about the inseparability of faith and the life. We talked about the life and what it should look like, but Paul goes on to tell us that it is by faith that this life is lived. And the love of the Savior, that He loved us and gave Himself up for us. And then also the grace of God, which Paul is not trying to nullify grace.

So we'll take a look at those next week, hopefully, if we can cram through both bells. Alright, let's go before the Lord. Heavenly Father, thank You for the opportunity to talk about Your Word and look at the richness of Your revelation. We just ask that You would to continue to bring these things to our minds throughout the week that we can meditate on the truth of your word and the grace that is shown through the crucifixion and our identification in the crucifixion and our continued understanding of growth and life because of that crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.