Identification Truths Plus 2012
Mike Doyle · May 20, 2012
Identification Truths Plus, No. 20
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492631561341

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We are in Romans chapter 6, and we are slowly but ever so surely working our way through 6, verse 6 through 10. 6 says, Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead dies no more, death no longer has dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives unto God. So we talked last week about what the old man is, the fact that a crucifixion took place, and what crucifixion was, and I guess my, yes ma'am? Laura needs a 14. Got any money? A little. I guess the thought that was hitting me this morning as I was getting ready, can you believe all this nonsense? What?

That you have an old man of sin nature? And was it crucified or not? By nature, no. My old man was crucified with him. Galatians 2.20 says, I have been crucified.

He's right here. But it's hard to believe. It's hard to believe. We have at least one person in this group that's honest. The rest of you guys are too religious. It is how you believe. Yeah, because we're here, we're not on a cross. Yeah, that's because we were on a cross. I know, but our human mind is stupid. I guess the reason I brought that up is that we have one obligation and one response to what we're learning. What is it? To just believe Him. Forget about how you feel about it or what your experiences are. Yes, ma'am? I have a question on the old man having been crucified and being crucified, because it's there and he's able to... Right?

Is that a perfect tense? Perfect tense means that it happened in the past, but abiding results into the future. So it happened, but it has residual effects even now. so you can say my own man was crucified you can say my own man is crucified but I thought like with last week or maybe it was the week before we had talked about it and you had mentioned that that crucifixion took a long time oh yeah and that he's able to bark at you and say hey why don't you whatever okay so that's not he's not dead okay as far as I just said who died and Bruce said I died, the old man didn't die. So what's death mean?

Separation. So I could be separated from my sin nature and it can still be functioning. And I can still be functioning. Where the death is, is that we got separated. And the separation is that the old man's on the cross doing what he's doing. What God did with him is put him on the cross.

But he's not. He isn't terminated. He doesn't terminate until you leave the planet. Okay. So he's still up there existing. He's in here existing. Right, but as far as that old man is still on the cross in my life right now. But it's like we give him attention. He hasn't been buried. Yeah, we give him space. We give him attention. We let us. do what he's going to do. We listen. We respond. We don't have to. See, before the crucifixion of your old man and you, you had no choice. When the sin nature activated, you sinned. You see that?

Okay, now, the concept that we're talking about is, like Monique said, it's hard to believe. But the issue is that you trust God with what He's telling you and then the Spirit of God over time will persuade you that this is true. And let me give you a good example.

When you were first saved, if you can remember, were you convinced? No, I wasn't. I said to my mother, you're giving me another Santa Claus story. Yes, Santa Claus story. Six months after you were saved, were you convinced? How about two years after you were saved when good old sin was giving you the shot again?

Were you convinced? I wasn't. But then over time, what happened? You learned more? You settled down a little more and the Spirit of God persuaded you. Now, I'm absolutely convinced that I'm saved. I don't know about the rest of you because he didn't persuade me about you. He persuaded me about me. You see that? I know. without the shadow. Now can I prove to you that I'm saved? No. But you changed, you transformed. No, you didn't know me then. No, but you told me what you were. You told me what you were.

The important thing though in all this to remember is it didn't matter what you felt, it was still true. That's right. That you have been placed into Christ. All these things were true of you, whether you believed it or not. And I may have believed it. But it didn't matter what you thought about it. It was still true of you.

So that's, you know, even though for two years you weren't convinced or six years or... Well, I was doing fine until, you know, some of the old things started showing up again. Yeah, but doesn't it also depend on whether, let's say you saved it in your youth, whereas somebody like myself, I was... quite a bit older. So that period of time where you transition from accepting the basic foundational truths of Christianity and working towards the growth truths is a greater period of time. Yeah, it is. And actually the fact that there is a declension and your experience of salvation sets you up for the growth truths.

Because I remember thinking, boy, there's got to be more to salvation than just my sins are forgiven. Give me a break. Because just being forgiven, in my whole life, am I going to confess and be restored to sin again, confess, be restored to sin again?

No. I mean, we did that as Catholics. I need something to do. Yeah. There has to be something about Christianity that really frees me from this sin that dogs me. Right here is where the information comes. My old man was crucified with him. Wow, when you see that, it's like, there's a real chance now that the cycle of sin and confess can be broken. Yeah? So...

The crucified in there, it's Arist. Oh, it's Arist. Crucified is Arist, which means it's a fact. Passive indicative. Oh, I like that. Passive voice means what's done to you. And indicative means it's reality. It is. There's no questioning about whether it's true or not. Okay, so, in verse 6 it says, my version or King James version says that the body of sin might be destroyed. What does yours say? Now, what does it say about the body of sin? In order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing.

Brought to nothing. Done away with. Done away with. Anybody else? Rendered inoperative. Going through this with Hal several years ago, he had said to me, cross that out and put in there rendered inoperative. Okay. So, notice what it said. The reason that I bring this up This is that word, keter geho, which means to put out of business, render inoperative. The old man was crucified with Christ.

All the rights that the sin nature had to you are now gone. Does that make sense? And the Holy Spirit indwelling every one of you can make that a reality in your life. What he's talking about here is the fact that you can be delivered on an experiential, conditional basis from the power of sin, sin's bondage. This is all positional truth now up through verse 10. But the reason that it's there is to say to you, there is a condition hooked to this position and that is you're going to be free conditionally from the control of sin in your life.

Now, you guys are all really good guys. And you've never committed any of those really big sins, right? No, none of you have ever been prideful, envious, none of that. And when they come along in your life, boy, they get a hold of you, don't they? It isn't that they're sort of tempting you. They get a hold of you, or you get angry. You know those real deadly suckers that nobody ever sees? Those are the ones. Those are the ones. So, the whole purpose of your old man being crucified with Christ is so that it's control over you can be put out of business, it will stop.

Okay? Now it doesn't say the sin nature went anywhere or that you went anywhere. No, it lessened. It means that you got separated from it. Yes, you just don't dwell on it. It's not in you. Okay, that's a wrong point. You don't have to respond. Yeah. You still have the choice to respond or not to respond. When we get down to verse 13 and 14, we'll talk about what the choices really are. But yeah, that's basically it.

And when you discover you don't have to, wow, that's a lot of freedom, isn't it? And it's all in your mind. So that being the case, what does it mean to be a slave to sin? You didn't have a choice. I know it's tough for you guys. I told you, you're all good guys. You don't know what it's like to be a slave to sin.

No, but you do it all the time. But if you don't have faith, you don't even think about it. It's a natural thing. You just do terrible things and you feel pretty good about it. Well, some of them you sort of whitewash and they aren't so terrible, so you do them again. Yeah. Right? Or some of them are not. You've rationalized them. to the point that, well, we Catholics had it figured out, didn't we? Everybody did.

We had this venial and mortal sin thing, right? The mortal sin, if you committed one of those, you were going to hell for sure. But if you confessed it, you know, you get a little scrub job. A venial sin just sort of darkens your soul a little bit. You were going to heaven anyway. You know, so the question always came up, especially if you're a young man about 16, how far can I go before it's a mortal sin? You know, that was my sin.

So the Bedials were okay. Really. We were going to purgatory for them, but still we weren't going to hell. That was good. So you see how they get catalogued and categoried between really bad ones and not so bad ones and every human being can take his not so bad sins or his bad sins and make them into not so bad ones and so he lives with sin. But this is not what God had in mind. And so then you're really not happy I mean, if you're going to be dying, you know you're going to heaven if you have faith. But if you're Catholic, you know that when you die, you're going to purgatory. How pathetic. What a terrible thing to look forward to. No, you know what I mean? Even if you go to heaven, first you have to go there.

Yeah, that's right. So you take that human rational thinking, which comes up with a system like that, and you compare it with what God has done in His Word. And He says that your old man was crucified so that sin would not have control or dominion over you anymore. and you begin to realize the Spirit of God has to persuade you about something else. You know what the something else is? That sin is a controlling factor that does have dominion over you that you can't stop it. I've told you before that my mom was an alcoholic and she thanked God for her alcoholism. You know why?

Through that process she learned about sin being a dominion. She could not stop drinking. couldn't stop. She had to seek something outside of herself to get sober, which in her case was the Lord. But she would not have learned that principle without having the alcoholism. If you have, I'm sure maybe you don't experience this, but you've had friends call you, and in essence what they've said is this particular sin has dominion over me.

They don't say it in those many words, but that's really what they're saying. And what's your answer? You've got to try harder, study more, go to church more, walk away, divert? What's the answer? You can ask God to take it away if you have faith. And what if he doesn't? He does. No, he doesn't. No? No. Why?

Because what you're asking him to do is to do something he's already done. We went over this a couple of weeks ago, and I don't know that I said it clearly twice, but the principle is that he's already dealt with it, and you're asking him to go back and change the flesh which he's already crucified. Yeah. So then you've got to recognize that that's the case, that he already did it, and that you have the choice to to sort of go God's way over, you gotta do that over and over and over and over and over.

What if we said it this way, when you say God please take this sin away from me what you're saying is Lord I don't want to abide but while I'm not abiding will you please have me not do that sin so I'll do other sins. And I don't believe you when I was crucified so for No, but you can ask him to help you to stop drinking or whatever your problem is. Okay. If I...

Give me the strength. If I'm crucified with Christ, how much strength does a crucified man have? I know, but we have a sinful nature. But I've been separated from it. Okay, but you're still sinning. Why? Because you're listening to it. Because I'm listening to it. Okay, but you will. There's no such thing in the Christ. Turn off the radio. Here's the question. Do I need to be stronger or weaker? Weaker. I need to be weaker. Not only that, I need to be totally incapable. Here's why. Listen to this.

In answer to the question, what does it mean to be a slave to sin? If you look at, I forgot to write down the reference, I think it's 2 Corinthians, or 1 Corinthians, the carnal mind, which is the sinful mind, this thing that keeps moving up in your head, is enmity against God. It means that you're irreconcilable enemies. For it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So you have this mindset that comes from the Adamic nature that's called the carnal mind.

And it is a total enmity against God. It will not reconcile. It won't compromise. And then Romans says, there is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God. That's sin controlling. None seek after God, my mind is totally at enmity with God. I will not be reconciled. It's like Muslims will not be reconciled, will they? Will they? They won't be. You cannot reconcile them. They're at enmity.

Now, so by the very nature man is set against God. Every man from Adam by his very nature and makeup is set against God. He's an enemy of God. No matter what kind of rhetoric he gives you, he's an enemy of God. Your sin nature is an enemy of God. So God is not in the business of helping his enemies do better at what they do.

No. But you can help the person. I'm the person, not the enemy. But I'm not going to pray that God come and intercede in your life. I can't ask him. I can't say, help me with this. I just can't seem to deal with it. Okay. Who's doing the asking? Me. Old man or new man? Okay. Old man or new man? Who asked them? The man in Adam or the man in Christ? The man in Christ. So the man in Christ is freed from the man in Adam, so why is he asking God to do anything positive to the man in Adam? Because the sinful nature trickles into my head. But not in Christ it doesn't. Right, but we ourselves, we hate that thing. We don't want it in there. That's exactly right, we don't. We want to be free, don't we? Yeah. How do you get free? How did you get free?

As crucifixion. There you go. How do we turn the radio off? How do we change the channel? I mean, there's got to be... Music starts, my feet are moving. How come? I like to dance. I love to dance. My answer to that is believe what God said. You know, that's when the dance comes. Did he say, you know, we're going to come to, when I did Wreck-It, That's exactly how you do it. So there's the next issue.

You got free will? I like to think so. If you're a slave to sin, how free are you before you're saved? How free are you? You are not free. I mean, if I'm Satan, what do I convince the world of? I have all of you under my elbow because you all have sin natures. And so to keep you stupid, I convince you that you have free will as you're in bondage. I mean, that's a genius of a plan, right? It's like going down to the Denver County Jail and saying, hey, you're free. How's the pigs in there? You're nice and free, aren't you? And you say, yeah, I am. No, you're not. No, you're not.

Your sin enslaves you. So by God sending his son to die on the cross to pay the penalty for your sins, that alone doesn't get you out of jail. You see that? That does not get you out of jail or get you free from the dominion of sin. How do you get free?

You have to die. You have to die. Did you die? The word of God says you did. My old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be totally put out of business and I should no longer serve sin. The only way to get free from sin is to die.

Do you see that? Karen. I think I'm a little confused like Monique because I'm thinking and Paul asks the Lord, Lord take this spur or thorn from my side and he says no I'm not going to do that. about sin. Well what was he talking about? He was talking about a physical impediment to his physical body. That's not sin. That's not sin. No. It was like he had vision issues and he said Lord heal my eyes and the worst is not right now. That's not sin. That's not sin.

Go ahead. Something was taken away from me. I asked God and I was certainly not like I have smarter ideas now with the Bible. You do. You're much smarter than you used to be. No. Okay, that's wrong words. But I asked God to take that away from me because I had such trouble with that. And actually I was very serious about it. And so he didn't take it away. It was me that did it.

All right. Let's envision in your mind that there's a cross right here. Okay? On this side of the cross is the natural man, the man from Adam, a slave to sin. Over here on this side of the cross is the resurrected new man in Christ. The cross is the separator between who he was, all he knew, and Adam. So here he stands.

So the question is, which side of the cross do you see yourself on? Are you here begging God to be over here or do you see yourself from this perspective looking back and knowing you are free? Which way? Do you see yourself on the resurrected side of the cross or on the crucified side of the cross?

I think that is where the difference is. If through the conditional work of the Holy Spirit and you begin to see I am no longer there. I'm here. I am a new creature in Christ. These events of my old man being crucified is an aorist tense. It's done with. We haven't gotten to the resurrection side yet, but you've been crucified, buried and resurrected in Christ and now seated in the heavenlies.

Is this reality? Or is this reality and both of them can't be true? Which is it? Can we ask a question? Because Monique is concerned that you can't ask God for help. Yeah, and I wasn't even aware. Let's restate this and see if we can bring some resolution for you. Did God help you by dealing with the sin nature or did he help you by showing you what was true of you in Christ? If we say it that way. In those days I didn't think about But did he show you?

Oh no, you don't. You don't think about sin. You just do it. Well, I didn't think about that I'm dead to Christ. Well, you didn't know. Well, that's what I mean. So therefore I'm thanking God for helping me. Helping you what? Understand? To release me from that. No, hold on. The first thing he did was he informed you. He told you about you being crucified, right? I learned it from you. No, you didn't. Yeah, I didn't even say that on the phone.

So now you have this new information, right? It's brand new. And what do you do with it? You believe it, right? You don't look around thinking, what does it feel like to be crucified? You just believe it, now. Now that you've believed it, what did you believe? You believed the fact. I was crucified. The problem is, is that To what extent did the crucifixion go? Did I really die? All that I worry about and used to be, am I really gone and separated from that? Answer, I am positionally but conditionally not yet. The Spirit of God is working my position into my condition so that I can see myself over here resurrected.

As an example, I use this kind of lame example, but my mom died 20 years ago. And I used to love playing bridge with my mom. And when she was down in the funeral home at room temperature, I didn't go down there and say, hey mom, never mind about the death.

It's your deal. Why not? Because she was dead. And what did that mean? She wasn't there. She was gone somewhere else. What does your crucifixion with Christ mean? You're not here. You're over somewhere else, resurrected in Christ. So if I come to you and say, Monique, it's your deal, you're not going to respond if you're dead.

And then it's like living in it though. Like your mom, let's say quitting drinking, all of a sudden, or over time, whichever, she's not drinking, so she's not sinning, so she's doing something else with all that time she spent drinking and being separated from God, then that frees her up to have a relationship with God, to live freely, doing different things. That's the weird part. A whole new life. It's like in the old days, I could do this sin or Sin keeps on coming around and tempting me. That's right. And it's how I respond in realizing that I have a new source of life.

I can begin a conversation that sort of ignores or doesn't even sense it. Doesn't it sound ridiculous that when you're tempted, your response should be, hey, go pick on somebody that it matters. Your temptation doesn't matter with me. I'm not susceptible. I mean, I wonder, why would Satan take the Lord out in the desert and tempt him.

It's like, fella, this is God you're messing with. He's not going to respond to what you have to say. Because he thinks he's all that. See, he's got you convinced that the Word of God isn't true. That this event that you were crucified with Christ really didn't happen. And you know how he's convinced you?

You keep sinning. So it can't be true if you keep sinning. And then you feel guilty. Because you're sinning and then you feel guilty and then you can just roll with that for a while. You can roll with that for days. Yeah. But the devil thinks he's God. He wants to overpower God. He thinks he knows God. Oh sure. And he tries to convince you that he's more powerful than God.

I think we end up spending a lot of time focusing on the sin whereas if we spend our time focusing on who we are in Christ, then we know who we are on that side, and this side isn't so interesting. I think you're absolutely right, but I do think the conditional process of working through the first thing you deal with is sin, and you really get sick of it, and you want to move on. But the only way of dealing with it, though, isn't it understanding who you are? Partially, yeah, understanding and believing who you are is really, really important, but I have to say that, somebody said the radio, the radio comes on, excuse me, I'm listening, and right in there is the dilemma, boy, I wish I didn't listen so closely, or I wish it didn't have that kind of effect. As time goes on, it doesn't. And why? Because you're tuned to a different radio.

And through the study of the Word of God, you begin to hear and see and experience resurrected life and grace. And that begins to attract you. And then you begin, through that process, the Lord Jesus Himself wins over your heart. And so you would rather go with Him than satisfy some desire of the flesh. That's why knowing Christ is such an important thing. And it's not to say that God, He could take it away. Like that, in a second if you want. As a young believer he does. So it's like there's all different ones. It could be like that or it could be over time. That's right. See, the example is this. Young people come to Christ, young people, and every time they pray God fixes it. And then over time, he doesn't fix so fast anymore. Why?

Because he's interested in changing, initially he changed the circumstances for you. To encourage you, to bring you along. But when it comes time to grow up, he's going to change you in the middle of the circumstances and the circumstances are going to stay the same, but you're different. You're different.

Okay, so then he did help me. How did he help you? Because I'm not doing it. Whatever it was, lots of things. No, that's exactly right. And the way that he helped you, if you want to use the term help, is he crucified you. That's how he did it. And you get to be grateful. He's putting the dominion and the slavery of sin out of business in your life so that you no longer have to respond. And you can just say thank you. It's very cool. But you don't just sit there saying thank you. Your attention has now gone somewhere else. And it's gone to the resurrected Christ.

I think a lot of the growth period is trying to see that what God did with the old man was the best thing that could have happened. I think we try and hold on to the old man, that there's some value, there's some benefit to the old man. We read here, God crucified the old man. All God wanted to do is separate us from that old man. We try and make some worth, we want to polish it up. The best thing that could have happened to us is what happened here, is the crucifixion.

I'll warn you, if I could teach you next week or whatever, I'm going to have everybody, not everybody, but a lot of you read 6, but put your name in it. And do you believe that? Because you can't get to verse 11 where you reckon unless you understand, you know, knowing this, that Courtney was crucified with him in order that the body of sin. Do you really believe that? I think everything, the struggle that's going on here is, do you really believe that? If you put your name in it, the question is, I think a lot of us don't believe that.

I think the problem is that even though we believe it, the sin, that old person, the image and everything that he was still remains there so strong that you know and it's sometimes so hard to ignore that sometimes like you know I believe this but all this is still there all this won't go away.

If you get honest with God you have to go to him and say now wait a minute was I really crucified or not which is true I mean both can't be true One of you is lying to me. Who is it? This is one of those things, and this happened from an old guy, Bill Gothard's seminars, which were 30 years ago, whatever. And he said something that really struck me, and you said it, and this is where, and he said, you know, he said, well, I believe it, I believe it, I believe it, but, and this, he says, omit everything before that but, because the but means, You don't really believe all this that you just said.

But, and I've held that because I believe this, I believe this, but I... No, you don't believe it. At the same time, what does the scripture say? You don't actually believe. That's the thing. When you say this, but you really don't believe it. Hold on.

Listen to 2 Corinthians 10.5.

He says, We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. And we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And I wrestled with this verse for quite some time because it was I would say I am emotionally charged or I'm thinking about this sin and it's dominating me. Paul says we're destroying the speculations and every lofty thing that's raised up against the knowledge of God. The question is, is it my emotion or my mental state or is it the knowledge of God that's true? When I take that thought captive, it means that I have to sit down there and instead of responding to it like David looking at Bathsheba, when he saw she was naked, he didn't have to keep looking, but it's like, oh, whoosh, if he had taken his thought captive, which of course is before Christ, some of the theological issues. This says I have to look at it in the light of what is the knowledge of God and the truth of the obedience of Christ.

That's where we stop. And what if we can't stop there? That's what Paul says to do. I mean, the point is, is that what Monique's talking about, here you are right there and Bathsheba goes by. I can't stop looking at her. Isn't that what you mean? She didn't look at Bathsheba. I mean, here's George Floyd. I would say, I'll think about it tomorrow. Okay.

The point that Randy is making and the point that everybody's trying to make is the question Am I free from sin? Am I really free from the power of sin? Am I? And that question has to be answered. And there comes a day when the believer looks at God and says, thank you for crucifying me. You did the right thing. You didn't fix me up. You got rid of me. And you replaced me in Christ with a whole new life. Most churches, most psychologists, they all begin with the premise that man is good, and that somehow we can clean him up and make him presentable.

And this concept is so foreign, and rarely taught anywhere else, that this is made to seem wrong, and all of those other people... Well, if your old man was crucified, it puts every psychiatrist in the world out of business. There's nothing to work on. But it puts most of these teachers out of business too. I'm serious. If your old man was crucified, what is psychiatry? It's the study of the sin nature and how to get it to work better. If this premise is true, every psychiatrist just lost their job. There's nothing left to work on. Do you see that? This is not behavior modification. This is death, burial and resurrection. So what was crucified? Obviously it wasn't your physical body. So was it your spirit or your soul? It was everything you were in Adam. Everything. His entire existence. His life. His spiritual life, which was death. His sin nature. All that we were in Adam is gone. What survived the cross?

Flesh. The body. Not really. The body is going to get it soon. But I mean that's survived, that's the same sort of, right? Here we both, I'm going through the cross and now I'm on the other side. What survived? There's only one thing that survived, my personhood. That's right. Everything else was crucified.

So before that you were walking around with a hoodie and now you don't need it. It's more than that. Do you realize that the Lord Jesus Christ has a brand new exclusive name just for you? that when you go to be with him, you're not going to be Monique anymore, he's got a name that's perfect, that only fits over here. Because all that you were in Monique doesn't exist before him. How cool is that?

See, the thing is, is that we have a tough time in our society getting away from the fix-up idea that I'm getting better. No, you're not getting better. and you should stop trying to get better. You should reckon yourself dead to sin. That's what Courtney is going to teach one of these days if I ever get to it. Question number two. Let's see if we can answer some questions.

What does freed or justified from sin mean? Not being a slave to it. It means a lot more than the fact that he died for me. It means a lot more than the fact that the blood of Christ paid for the penalty and all my guilt is gone. Here's the thing, I as a new creature in Christ have a right to be in the presence of a holy God. I can stand right in his presence.

If the only thing God did on the cross was to pay for the penalty of your sins through the blood of Christ. Do you have a right to stand in the presence of a holy God? Answer no. You know why? Because you're still a sinner. But if you've been crucified with Christ, buried and resurrected and united to him and resurrected, guess what? from a positional standpoint, you're not a sinner anymore, you have a right to be in the presence of the Holy God. So being justified or freed from sin means that you are no longer identified with, no one can say, Monique, you're a sinner. Is that a true statement? Can I say, you're not a sinner anymore? Is that a true statement? You better believe it is according to this doctrine. That doesn't mean you don't commit sins while you're functioning out of the Adamic nature that you've been crucified from, but your position, your identity, you are no longer a sinner.

Because sinners don't get to go to heaven. They don't get to be in Christ. Fixed up, forgiven by the blood of Christ sinners don't get to be in Christ. You can't be a sinner and be in Christ. And that's the whole problem, right? Because God wants to have, God created us to have personal relationship with Him and before Christ came and took care of sin, He couldn't do that.

He couldn't do it. Yeah, the Jewish temple was a perfect example. The closest God could get to man was on the other side of that curtain. And it was really thick. He wants to The Shekinah glory was in the temple on the other side of the curtain, and the Jews were up there, but that little thing that happened on the cross, the curtain was ripped from the top to the bottom.

Why? Because the sin was resolved. It was over. And it wasn't that we could go in, it was now God could That justification is passed, which means you can't take credit for it and you can't do it and fix it or tweak it or anything else. It's all done to you and for you.

So now, question seven. It's a tough question. Monique, I'm asking you this. What's your relationship to sin now? Notice I'm not talking about sins, the bad things you do. What's your relationship to your sin nature? I'm dead to it. That's the right answer. Our relationship to sin has been broken forever. See that? Now if you want to believe something, people say, oh gee, my Christian life, I'm a person of faith. No you're not.

You don't have enough facts to believe yet. In the last several weeks, we've given you enough facts that you can strain your brain believing what you've just learned. Is it true or not? Do I believe him or not? And you end up saying, well Lord, there's no experience that I have that would indicate to me that what you just told me is true, but you know what?

Everything you've told me that's true up to this point is true, so I think I'll buy this too. And when you do that, the Spirit of God will persuade you and convince you that you have been crucified. I think the easiest way to understand what we've been talking was kind of like that example you had of the captain being tied to the mast, and you still listen to him, but he's not in charge anymore, you have a new captain. That's right, a new boss.

So question eight, does being justified from sin mean sinless perfection in the believer? No. No. Justified from sin does not mean sin must perfection, but something really different and actually beyond that. It means, it does not refer to an experience of deliverance from sin, but, now listen to this closely, of passing beyond in the death of Christ at the cross, the sphere where the former relationship with sin existed. You have left the sphere where sin existed.

It's not an experiential event. We are counted justified and wholly righteous with respect to the thing seen itself. We've been separated from it absolutely and totally. So, you have to understand that this initially is way beyond any state of experience.

This is not something you're going to experience initially, even though it's true of you. a newly established relationship to sin which the saints have because they died with Christ in which they stand in Christ and he is towards sin. What's Christ's relationship to sin? Christ's relationship? What's Christ's relationship to sin? Well, he died. He defeated sin on the cross. Yeah. What's his relationship to it? He doesn't have one. What's your relationship to sin? You don't have one.

We keep looking back at it. We are, have been qualified by God according to Colossians to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints of life. We are now heavenly people. Our relationship to sin is over forever. We are justified from sin, we rejoice in deed and have a most blessed experience. But we don't say sin is gone forever in the flesh. We know it's still there. It's just that I'm not there. But they, having died, are declared righteous from sin.

They are cleared before God of all condemnation because of sin's presence in the unredeemed body and delivered from all of sin's former rights and bondage over them. Next week. I still have some questions to go next week. So here's what I want you to think about this week. Next week, the first question I'm going to ask is did you really die?

Did you or didn't you? Yeah, we'll have to say yes, so we don't have to think about it. You won't have to say yes. You won't have to say yes. Go to God this week and just say, you know, Father, did I really die? I know your word says that and I do believe you, but did I really die? In other words, we have to persuade ourselves. No, you don't. No, you don't. How can you persuade yourself you're dead? It's like self trying to kill self. It isn't going to happen. You can't commit suicide in this deal. Okay, then what should we answer? I mean, the point is, not only are you dead, but you're buried and you're resurrected.

Or maybe a better question is, Father, which side of the cross am I on? I want to see myself over there. Now that you can show me. I want to see myself here. I want to see myself resurrected in Christ. That's something you could do for me. It'd be cool, huh? Because to be honest, most of us still see ourselves here, even though we know all of that. We're still here, up here. But he's moving us to there. Alright, let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your word. We know sometimes the stupendous things that you've done to deal and deliver us from sin itself is hard for us to get our arms around, but we do believe you and we do trust you and we do recognize that when your son said that your spirit would come and teach us all that was true of you that this is one of those things and so we trust you with that father and we thank you we pray in your son's precious name amen