Great Doctrines of Salvation

Okay, we're working on... I know you think that 8 comes after 7, it doesn't. 9 comes after 7. I don't know why I do that. I do it almost every class. I think it's because I never ever get through and I'm always doing like, you know, one class two weeks and I don't know why I do it. So, in 9 we're working on Romans chapter 6. versus six through ten and we had gotten down to question five, right? Or four? Lesson seven? I'm sorry, wrong lesson. See, you wonder why? So what question are we on? Eight. That's what I have written. OK, good. Awesome.

So the question is, In verse 4, the King James Version says, which I don't think any of you even use anymore, well you do, should walk in newness of life. The word walk means to grow together. What do you think the source and energy of this walk is? Not a very tough question. Holy Spirit. So he's the source and the energy. I could, we could jump forward. Let's do that.

Go to Romans 8.2. And read, somebody read it when we get there. The spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Stop. Right there.

Now if you change the word law to principle, read it again and use the word principle. The principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin. Principle of spirit, ok. So there's a new principle of life, and we talked about it last week, this newness of life, that our walk is based on this newness of life, and we have this newness of life because we're positioned in Christ. That energy As Romans 8 says, there's a new principle of the spirit of life.

It's the Holy Spirit himself. He produces this life in and through you because of your position in Christ. You okay with that? A couple of quotes. If we share Christ's death, then we also share his life. This is what Paul meant when he said, for me to live as Christ. Have you ever run across that verse and thought, what the heck is he talking about? For me to live as Christ?

This thing's too loud, isn't it? Is it loud? Is that better? See, you can just move it. It's like volume control. For me to live as Christ. You have to understand identification to understand what he's talking about. For me to live as Christ. You see that? Are you awake? Or, our inward man is being renewed day by day, I was crucified with Christ, Christ lives in me, the life I now live and the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

So, it's important for us, at least in our minds, to understand that it is new life, and it's newness of life, and the energy of that life is not your willingness your desire or your will to make it happen. It's the Spirit of God. And you, what's your role? What's your role in the functioning of this new life? Reckoning it to be true. You live by faith.

That sounds so easy, but it isn't. Alright, in verse 6, somebody read verse 6, Romans 6. Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. Okay, probably the most critical verse in all of Paul's epistles right there, because it's the first time he says it, that my old man was crucified with him. What does anybody else's version say?

Romans 6.6.

Old man? That's fine. Holly, what did you say? Old man. Okay. The word that I want to concentrate on is knowing. That's the first word. Knowing this means to come to know. How do we come to know facts like these? How do you get the knowledge of facts like these?

From the word. Get it from the Word. On Wednesday night we're studying Romans 10, 11. And then 10, you know, it says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The Word of God tells you this information. This is the only place you're going to see it, or maybe put it this way, this is the first place you're going to see it. My introduction to this verse, I'd have been a believer about less than two months. And the guy that led me to the Lord, I had lunch with him one day and he told me on the phone, he said, bring your Bible for lunch. And so I did. And we sat down at a restaurant and he said, open up to Romans 6, 6 and read the verse. So I read it.

And he said to me, what does it say? So I'm going to say to you, what does it say? What does it tell you? What's the information that it communicates to you? old man, your old self was crucified." Well, what does that mean? What it means is that somebody in this verse died. Right? Somebody did. Something died. So I said to him, I said, well, it looks like I died. He said, yeah, you did. Well, I said, that doesn't make any sense. Well, sense to who? It doesn't make any sense to the old man, because the old man is getting news that he was just crucified. Right?

And so you imagine yourself sitting there reading this, thinking, well, I'm sitting here, what do you mean I got crucified? Do you see that? Well, here comes this word of God towards you about being crucified. What do you do with it? I mean, you can debate it, you can think about it, you can mull it over, but it's a fact. And our response to it is just to believe him when he says that my old man was crucified. And it's a coming to know, meaning this, that I've initially told this, that my old man was crucified, but this is a growing principle for me to understand.

Because when you first see it, you don't buy it. And then when you do believe it, I think all of the opposition begins to form together to prove that this verse is wrong. Don't you find that true? Because your sin nature is going to try to prove to you that nobody got crucified and it's still in charge and it's still running the show.

But who died? Did your old man die or did you die? You died to it. See, it didn't die, it's still alive and well and living in you, but you've been separated from it. My old man was crucified, and why? Well, I better not jump ahead. Describe what your old man is. Question 10. Now some of you guys don't want to tell me your secrets. Most of you have spent years polishing up your Holly Hiltz image. So, what is your old man? I have written down that it's, if I can find it, all that you are before salvation. Yeah. Everything you are or were in Adam. Everything. Now, let's see.

When our boy Adam was in the garden and God told him, gave him one law, he said, don't you dare eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's significant, I think, that the tree was called that. The knowledge of good and evil and that there were contrasts. So, would you not say that the tree itself had good branches on it and evil branches? Or good fruit and evil fruit, right?

Here's what happens. Most people become Christians and they don't know anything about the tree and they don't know anything about the old man being crucified. What they think Christianity is, is to travel off of the evil branches over to the good ones. What this verse tells us is what God intends for us to do is to get down out of the tree and go down to the garden and find the tree of life and get up in that one and stay there. We think that holiness is being good people.

It's not. So your old man can be good. And to be honest with you, one of the biggest barriers to spiritual growth is our own goodness. You see that? You talk about something that takes a while to come into the realization of, but that takes some time. That you find out that your goodness isn't the new principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. It's not your goodness. It's different. Questions about that? got it all together and he keeps doing things to it. Yeah. Because by their own self-righteousness they feel like there's no need here.

You know I have been, let me make sure I use the right word, I have been challenged, that's the perfect word, I've been challenged most of my Christian life when it comes to understanding these verses and understanding crucifixion by people who want me at some point in my time to tell them what to do.

And their old man is really saying to me, if you will just give me a list of what to do, then I'll do it, and then I'll be fine. Now, if my old man, that was crucified on the cross, includes all of his desires, all of his lusts, his ambitions, his hopes, his judgments, all of who he is, including his goodness, then if I tell you what to do that sounds good, then you're going to give something for the old man to do rather than to stay inactive. And the reason I say that is question 11. Does our old man being crucified mean that he's been obliterated, eradicated, and is he gone forever?

Okay. You have to explain after the word no. Why? Well, I like your thing. If the music gets going, I feel my feet are still dancing. That's right. When the music starts, why do I respond? Can we interrupt and just kind of go back to what you had said about being challenged? It also seems then, like let's say you tell someone what to do, that would be good, and they do it, then you get the credit too, which could be sort of dangerous for you too. Yeah, we both get credit. Yeah. Awesome. See, here's the thing.

Why do you think God did it this way? Why do you think he instituted and carried out this identification with the crucifixion of the old man. Why did he do it that way? Why didn't he just fix this up? So that he gets all the glory. But he could have gotten the glory the other way. He could have fixed this up and gotten a lot of glory, couldn't he? Why does he, why this, knowing that my old man, why does my old man have to be crucified?

Because in your flesh dwells no good thing. Hear that? See, you know why none of you leaped up with the right answer? Because you don't really buy into the fact that in my flesh dwells no good thing. You're still on the self-improvement program. You see? I don't mean that as a criticism. So am I. There comes a day, though, that when you say to God, you know what?

Crucifying me was the right thing to do because I am incorrigibly bad. I cannot live this life, I cannot function five seconds as I ought to because of the power of my sin nature. And so he comes back and says, well, I understood that, that's why we did this crucifixion thing. I separated you from that guy so that you could live in newness of life.

And the rest of verse 6 says, somebody read the second half of verse 6. In order that, after that phrase. In order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. A couple of points there. One, that we would no longer be slaves.

I know if you live in a tyrannical country you understand slavery, but we Americans don't understand slavery, come on. Constitution says we're not in bondage to anybody. But the Word of God says you're enslaved to sin. It controls you, you don't control it. One of the purposes of crucifixion is to get you out from under the slavery of sin.

But then the other part there is that some versions say body of sin, what do some of your other versions say? Should be done away with? Is that what yours says? Mine says our body of sin might be done away with. What's the body of sin? Or is there somebody else's version that uses some other language? What's the body of sin?

I think that was what was crucified. It was. But what is it? Maybe it's like the opposite of the body of Christ. It's like the body of Adam. Boy, that's a whole new thought. I've never thought about that before. Is he talking about a physical body? No, I think it's an entity. It's an entity, right?

Here in the inner linear, we should not serve the sin. The sin. Now, well, I'm not going to ask him to. Whenever you see the word, especially in the Book of Romans, After chapter 5, verse 12, whenever you see the word sin, it's going to be singular. It's not going to be sins. It's not going to be plural. And in Greek, it's always going to have the definite article in front of it, the sin. And what that means is a sin nature. The whole body of sin is the entire nature and all of its activities would not be eradicated, but put out of business.

Malloy used to say, because he was an electrical engineer, take an off line. You know, you turn the switch and there's no juice going to it anymore so it doesn't operate. Because I'm a business guy, I always like to put out of business. The thing is, is to get, the purpose of the crucifixion of the old man was so that we would no longer serve it and we no longer serve it if it isn't functioning.

Do you see that? If you're not tied to it or you're not under it, then you don't have to respond to it. If you recognize that all of this was done so that the entire program of sin would be nullified, then you begin to get a picture of, wow, God is pretty serious about freeing us from the dominion of all sin. Not just the ones that make you angry, you know? Not just the ones that you don't think you can control, it's the whole entire principle of sin, the whole thing.

Is that possible? Think he's serious about that? Because I've gone to him and said, I've studied this stuff and read it, but boy, I'm still sinning and that's not cool. That's what, I don't understand that principle. From Watchman Lee? Yeah. Yeah. That you could still follow it, but it's ridiculous, and he's not in charge anymore. Yeah, because your mind works like mine, because we both have sin natures. And when you read verses like this, and you spend some time going through them, then in the very next second, your sin nature is screaming at you. Right away you think, and wait a minute, Which is reality here?

And the ship captain, everybody knows the story about the ship captain. Do you know the story about the ship captain? Watchman Nee in his book, The Normal Christian Life, described it like this. That there was a captain of a sailing ship, and he was a tyrant.

He was a brutal man. And there was a mutiny. And they replaced him. And what they did was, they tied him up to the mast. and he was not in charge anymore but a big storm came up and during the storm he's yelling out orders to people and sailors are running by him thinking oh I better respond to him because they're so used to his voice that they would respond to his orders when in fact he's not in charge anymore. You see that? I'll tell you where you've seen that in public.

You look at the news media today, over the last two or three weeks, there are Democrats that don't think they lost. They still think they're in charge. Nancy Pelosi still thinks she's the queen. She still does. You see that? She is not buying what happened. You see that? Well, you're not buying that your old man was crucified because he keeps yelling at you.

Can I go another step further? Oh, please. Are you done? No. So, and it's probably the same question I ask over and over and over. Do you say in your head, I'm not listening to the captain because that's stupid, because he's not the captain anymore, or do you wait or be patient until you don't want to follow the captain anyway.

That's a great question. I was thinking, in that statement Paul made, how can we who are dead to sin continue? What's the logic there? You start with the logic, but then, and it's not this week, and at the rate we're going it's probably next week, but the week after. The answer, I think, is in 12. That's when Paul first tells us what we're supposed to do. So you're going to make me wait? No, I'm going to answer now. Because I can't read ahead. Just don't get bored when I repeat it in a couple of weeks.

You're to reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin, but alive unto God. And we'll spend probably ten minutes on the word reckon, which is logizimai. It's a word that's actually, it's a word of faith, but it's more than that. So who, I don't remember in the story, they tied up the captain, but then did they have another captain? Yeah, they replaced him with a new leader. So it's more a matter of putting your focus on the new leader. Okay, that's good.

And here's the problem we have with that. Newness of life with a new leader who is Christ himself, with a new source of life who is the Holy Spirit and a new environment that we live in which is grace is totally new to us. We don't know how to function in that environment. There is nothing that you ever lived in before salvation that qualifies you to function in Christ. So it's an entirely new process.

That's why John in And one John talks about their babes, young men and fathers. And that's why there's this thing called spiritual growth. Watch this little one. She has everything in her to be perfect, as she's designed and created to be. But she's not going to be perfect by this afternoon at four o'clock. She has to grow. She has to learn. Her brain has to grow. Her body has to grow.

Well, you know, I don't care how old you are, when you become a believer, you go back to this. That's where you start. And that's really hard because she's, well, gee, I'm an older person. I'm over 12, you know. And I eat solid food. Not spiritually, you don't. And I always think I'm smarter than, you know, the Word of God is. And not only that, I'm hanging around with a bunch of really cool Christian people now. And they're telling me what to do.

See? That's the difference, too, between growth and position. Yeah. Positionally, that's immediate. Yeah. Growth starts. Positionally, she has everything she needs. It's all there to be an adult. Conditionally, take a look. All of us, positionally, have all, everything. If any man be in Christ, what is he? All things have passed away. Behold, everything has become new. I'm positioned in Christ. I'm perfect. And God treats me as an adult, perfect son. He doesn't treat me like this. That even makes it harder, I think. Because He recreated me in Christ. an adult. I keep grabbing for the glasses.

So in terms of position, you have to understand that Romans 6.6 is positional. Does anybody understand what I mean by that? And it's judicial. Do you understand what I mean by that?

This is a transaction that took place or God being the judge, the Lord Jesus being crucified and you being crucified in Him, it's a positional truth. It's true of you whether you recognize it, live in it, or not. And it's judicial because God carried it out and made the determination as the judge. Would you say the flesh is a person or a condition? You think it's a position or is it a person? The word teaches that the flesh is also a person. Not just a condition.

Hebrews 12.9 says, Fathers of our flesh, the old man is a person. Your sin nature is personal. And the reason for that is, the reason I bring it up is so that you understand that your old man was not eradicated. He's still alive and well and living in Indiana, or wherever you live.

You see, it's impossible... I'm going to spend a little time on... What I'm talking about is a One Nature position. You'll run into... I call them One Nature. What do they call themselves? There's a group headed up in Denver called Exchange Life Ministries. They're One Nature people. They believe that the old man was eradicated, that he's done away with. Now the problem you have with that is that how can the old man be eradicated and then you still be sinning?

Well, their answer to that is that to retain the manifestations of sin itself what you have is that you have memories keep track, you know, you have urges from your body and ultimately they blame it all on Satan. And the problem is that when you get to Romans 7 it says that in me, that is in my flesh, Paul takes ownership for his flesh. It dwells in no good thing even though he's been separated from it. It's still in him and it's still his.

Well, if they don't believe it's memories, how do they explain 1 John 1? Confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive your sins. Yeah, why would you have to confess? Sure. So if you have sin, you must have a source for sin. And it can't be a memory. See that?

So, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful It does not exhort the believer to put off the old man if he was dead. Why would, in Ephesians, where Paul says, put off the old man, why would he exhort you to do that if he was dead? He wouldn't. He wouldn't. So, just, how do you put him off? How do you put him off?

That's right. How do you put the old man off and put the new man on? I just, now what I've done is I've gone from position to condition. Yeah, focused on the new. Yeah, how do I put him off? I recognize and believe that he's already off. I recognize and believe that I already have Christ on. I exercise faith in the facts. That's how you do it.

See, and put on is one of those cool words that means, and I always think, my mom was one of those ladies that had a mink coat. And on really cold days, she'd go outside, she'd get into that thing. I mean, and it was right down to the floor. And she, I mean, she was putting it on, man. She was hidden inside that sucker, and she was warm.

Putting it on, putting it on. And also, I guess, shows in action. I mean, you have to put it on. You can't, like, see it over there, and, like, it's going to jump on you. You got to put it on. And how do you put it on? That's the question. You recognize one that you already have it on and you believe that it is on.

I already am in Christ. I already have been separated from the old man. When God asks you in the New Testament or in Paul's epistles to believe something, it's always faith in something that's already true. Your faith doesn't make it true. It's already true. He never asks you to believe something that by your believing it will become true.

So is putting on a very good analogy, because that makes it sound like you dig it on, dig it off, but technically, positionally, it doesn't go on and off. It stays on. Positionally, right. But when you get an exhortation, it's usually a conditional one.

It's usually based on a fact that's already true. When I'm to reckon myself indeed dead unto sin, but alive unto God, what is that based on? The fact that I am. Now, if I don't ever do that, I'm not going to live in it. You see that? Well, and that living is also the verse that's following where it's yielding yourselves to God. We're going to have fun with the yielding when we get to it.

Excuse me. Go. Go. No, great. Do we ever have classes on the devil? If I did a class on the devil, it would be about 20 minutes and we'd be done. Yeah. Maybe we could do that? Sure. Actually, we can do that, no problem. Yeah, because there's several things about Satan.

One, he's a defeated foe. He is a foe, though. And so, if he is defeated, what do you do with defeated enemies? You put them to work for you. And so, whenever he's around, or you perceive him around, He's being used by God to approve you and for you to grow spiritually. In his mind he wants to defeat you, but he can't because of your position in Christ. He can't change your position. He can persuade you that you don't have a position. But see, I don't think...

I remember our buddy Sean, when he first came to the Tuesday Group, He asked us to pray one day that Satan was really picking on him. He was having a tough day. So I said to him, I said, Charm, a couple things. One, Satan doesn't know your name, and he doesn't know where you live, and he doesn't care. And I said, he's not omnipresent, so you're so important of a foe to his agenda that he came to Denver just to pick on you?

Well, he's got surrogates. I said, trust me. You've got a sin nature, he doesn't even need to be around. He doesn't even need to be around. I was thinking of that exchange group? Exchange Life Ministries? Yeah, so they're giving the devil more power than he has. That's exactly right, just like the Charismatics do. They give him way more control and power than he has.

Okay, next question is to see how honest you are. The question is, have you counted yourself so incorrigibly bad that as to have to be crucified? Took you a little while to look at me. But I'm new, I have a good history. I'll read what I wrote down, this is from a long time ago.

And really to enter spiritually into the meaning of this awful word, our old man was crucified, involves with all of us deep exercise of soul. For no one by nature will be ready to count himself so incorrigibly bad as to have to be crucified. But when the Spirit of God turns the light upon what we are from Adam, These will be blessed words of relief. Our old man was crucified. You don't tell a brand new believer when you're talking about Romans 6, things are going to get really bad for you.

But we all live in a day-to-day real world where the sin nature is dogging us and the Spirit of God is beginning to show us things about ourselves that we would rather not know you know, and we're confessing and asking for restoration and forgiveness and on and on we go until we arrive one day that, wait a minute, God has a solution for this whole thing. And the solution was that he crucified me.

Wow! That takes care of it. So now when I confess It isn't really about my sins anymore, it's about agreeing with God and what He's already done. And so, slowly, ever so slowly, the dominion that the sin nature had over you begins to dissipate, because you wised up. You're getting it thanks to the Spirit of God. It isn't because you got old and tired. It's because you're wising up. and you're living by faith. You don't have to respond. That sin nature, you were crucified so that sin nature would be put out of business.

Well, guess what? The doors are closing. They're turning the lights off. Why wouldn't dying to yourself be appropriate in the light of this verse? Anybody understand what the question is? And it's based on this. If you look at 1 Corinthians 15 31, you don't have to go there. Paul says, I die daily. So dying daily to sin. In other words, it's my job. to die to myself.

And I remember as a young believer that in the church I was going to, it kind of was a buzz phrase amongst those who thought that they were spiritually mature. How's it going? Oh, I'm dying to self. You know about that, huh? What's wrong with that statement? Well, if we're to reckon ourselves dead, it's kind of, there's no us. Yeah, so why would you work on dying? Plus it seems like any of those catchphrases can't be a good thing. You know, there's a lot of truth in that. There's a lot of truth in that. Yeah, but the issue is, is that am I already dead or not?

Did I die to sin or didn't I? So what's he talking about in that verse? What's that? What's he talking about in that verse? Yeah. What does he mean then by dying? Paul said, I died daily. Well, let's go to the verse and look at it. We want to look at it in context. 1 Corinthians 15, 31. So let's read 29 through 32, whoever gets there. What was it again? 1 Corinthians 15, 29 through 32. Somebody read it.

Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them? Why are we also in danger every hour? I protest further in my boasting in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord. I die daily. Keep going. If from human motives I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me? If the dead are not raised, let us drink, eat, and drink for power to God. Okay, here's the question.

Is he talking about a spiritual reality? An inward struggle? Or is he talking about outward influences against his ministry? Isn't he talking about physical problems? Huh? Physical peril that he's going through? Yeah, he's talking about the physical problems he has and just living every day. That he's in danger of being killed every single day.

Has nothing to do with It's crucifixion on the cross. That's why looking in context is really important. In that context it doesn't mean an inward struggle with sin. That's not what it's about. Paul indeed says he desired to be conformed unto Christ's death.

In Philippians 3.10 but as one who has federally shared it and not in one who has thought to approximate or imitate Christ's death.

The issue is, and it's an easy trap to fall into, the focus is on the fact that you've already died. Now, conditionally you can say, well, boy, you know, the last 15 minutes you wouldn't be able to tell that I died. But it doesn't change the fact that you already did. So you don't need to work on the last 15 minutes.

What you need to work on, what you need to understand and believe is that you already have died. See the difference? And it's subtle, because these things will come up in your life and say, oh, you know, every time I'm in this situation, I respond this way, sinfully. I've got to work on that. No, you don't. No, you don't. What do you need to work on if you're going to work on anything? Reckoning.

Trusting God in when he tells you something. You see that? You either did die to sin or you didn't. That's why confession is such a really cool word. One John 1 says that if you confess your sins, what's the word confession mean? It means to say the same thing. So what does God say about you?

You dirty rotten person in Adam, you've been sinning and you really need to You need to line your thinking up with my thinking about you. It doesn't make you irresponsible for your sins. What it does is that you recognize, look Father, I believe what you have told me. I also am saying to you that I have been functioning and acting as though I wasn't what you told me I am, a person in Christ. So I confess your right And I'm wrong. And what does he do? Does he make me better than I was before? No, what he does is he restores me to fellowship.

Because when I live in the flesh, I have no fellowship. Because the flesh doesn't have any fellowship. Why would it if you've been crucified? I mean, if there was any possibility of the flesh having fellowship with God, why would there have been a co-crucifixion? There wouldn't have been.

We'd have been in the fix-up program. So, our job is to learn about who we are on the resurrected side of the cross and live from that perspective. Now, I am going to take nine, just to make it expedient. Next week when we start in on Lesson 9, I'm not going to, because I think it's kind of redundant. You guys are smarter than that. Because the first question in 9 is the following statement true.

If I did not die with Christ on the cross, I cannot be living with Him risen from the dead. But I'm still back in the old Adam in which I was born. And so my question is, is that statement true or not true and why? And I'll tell you why I ask that question, just because we've been sort of talking about it all morning today.

There's no more difficult task for a believer to be vigilant about that God has assigned to the believer, and that is to trust Him and believe Him about these facts. It's the most difficult thing for us to do. But as we grow, we will do it. I died, and I am being conditionally conformed unto His death. Anyway, I may next week, from an expedience standpoint, jump over some of these questions. Or maybe I'll have a better idea. You get the answer.

Let's close. Father how we thank you for your word and how we thank you for our position in the Lord Jesus Christ that we already have been crucified with him. That the whole environment and body of sin would be put out of business. so that we wouldn't serve sin anymore, Father. And that is not the future, that's now. Thank you. We pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.