Identification Truths Plus 2012

I forgot to tell you about the book inside that covers a list of other books and prices. Forget about the prices. You can't buy the green letters for a buck anymore. What's that? Nothing. The last one. Well, you got them. A lot of these books that I have were stuff that I got from Myles Stanford years ago and they were not leftover bundles of them. So I give them away whenever I can. Unless you're rich, then you have to pay for them. OK. So how many people at least looked at the book?

Everything we've done so far and we will continue to do for about the next four or five weeks are in preparation for. getting right down to Romans 6 identification truths. Not that we haven't been talking about identification, we are going to talk today about the first Adam and our identification with him. And the goal is, at the end of this first couple of months, if you take a good look at your old man, your sin nature, that you don't like him as much as you did like him when you started the class. And that you will find reason that God crucified you. He saved you, but then, as we'll maybe discuss today, he did a lot more than pay the penalty for your sins. So that's kind of the direction we're going. Do you have one of those books? I'll give you one of those books next week. So, first question today.

Why is it important to know something of our personal history in the first Adam. Now if you read the book you'd know the answer. Do you know what it's like to be in Christ? To know what it's like to be in Christ? I would say that probably that's the third reason and a sequential logical explanation of why. Is it important that you know something about yourself?

Absolutely. You need to know that nothing in our sinful, fallen, endemic nature is good. That's pretty good. What I wrote down, we can't become what we already are in Christ conditionally until we know what we were in Adam. To know who we were in Adam, we must discover what Adam was. and when you discover what Adam was, since he is the head of the human race into which we were born.

Remember the second class we talked, we went to Genesis and we talked about creation and like begets like, remember that discussion? And like begets like is a discussion of physical, you know dogs are dogs and birds are birds, humans are humans, sinners are sinners. The like begets like principle is a spiritual principle as well as a physical one. So, thus we can understand the nature and condition of the life we inherited from him, the life that continues to indwell us as believers. So we have that life doesn't ever go away even though we're free from it. But it's important that you know about it and you discover that some of this craziness that goes on inside of you really has a source, and the source is Adam.

I put down a second reason is to know the facts concerning our position, which Randy, starting next week for two weeks, he's going to cover position and condition thoroughly. In only two weeks. So really important concepts and principles for us to Everything about our life in Christ starts out being positional. Even your new birth was positional when it happened, right? When you got saved, how much of an experience did you have other than you were pretty excited? I remember thinking to myself, boy, what Christ did 2,000 years ago accrues to me today. Today? I just sinned this morning, today.

So a condition of our old life in Adam is a process to a vital key of spiritual growth. Now that may not be one of those principles that you would readily accept until you get on the path of spiritual growth and then you'll find that what you're discovering in your own heart isn't exactly Ozzie and Harriet, for you older people who know Ozzie and Harriet. Who would be a contemporary Ozzie and Harriet, is there such? I don't know, but who knows what they're really thinking. That's true, that's really true.

So, next question is, what are the three aspects of our relationship to Adam? You want to guess first? There are three aspects that all of us have in a relationship to Adam. We're born in Adam and because we are born in Adam we have these three aspects. I'll give you the first one and then maybe we can go from there. The first one is that we have a position of sin. Source. We have a position of sin.

Nobody who was born in Adam escapes sin. That's the real reason why Joseph or no other human being could have been the Lord Jesus' father, because he couldn't be identified with Adam. If he was, he would be positioned in Adam and his source of his life would be sinful. One nature of sin. The nature of sin. So Adam's nature is sinful.

We tried to talk about it last week, talking about the self. It got kind of confusing. Give me a synonym for self. What would be a good synonym for self? Anybody? Would you say it's a sin nature? What do you say? It's not your essential identity, it's a nature that you have.

And it's self-focused. That's the, you know, when you go back and you take a look at the temptation of Eve in the garden. You know what he was trying to do? He was trying to get her to look at herself. You know? And to get her to look at earthly things. Because she looked, and she said, The fruit's pretty cool. It's good to eat. It's good to make one wise. She's looking at herself.

Up until that time, I don't think there was any self in the sense of something that was good for me that wasn't somehow associated with the Lord, with God. But your soul is the thing that makes you self-aware, right? What are the properties of your soul? mind, emotion and will. It makes you aware that you exist because you can think and you are aware that you are, that you do exist. Okay?

Now you take a soul like Adam had and he's created perfect, God said it was good and then he sins and he's infected now. It's said that he became flesh. He got his sin nature. Now what happens? He's totally self-absorbed. Totally. Not a little bit. Totally self-absorbed.

To the point that when God finally finds him in the garden because he's hiding, who does he blame for his sinfulness? No. Who did he blame? The woman you gave me. Who did he blame? That's what the sin nature is all about. Anybody but me. So we get a position of sin, we get a nature of sin from Adam. And the third thing, we get a personal sin, it's a practice. We sin.

So this is a question I'm going to ask when we get to Romans 5.12. When did you become a sinner? I was born. When? When we were conceived. Is that what you agree with? I said when Adam sinned. She's right. When Adam sinned, we sinned. Because we're identified with him.

By Romans 5.12, I said by one man sin entered the world, right? And along with sin came death. And death passed upon all men. Why? Because all men sinned in Adam. Again, that's when you'll expand on that positional issue before. So we have a source of sin, Adam. We have a sin nature that we got from him and we also have our own personal sins.

So we were out looking at, we were out at the church yesterday seeing the baby, right? And I'm holding this baby that weighs now almost 6 pounds. It's this big. You know, and I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, you know what? This little guy's got a sin nature. And they're not going to have to send him to sinning academy to teach him how to do it. Because he's going to do it on his own. Do it well. He'll be good at it.

Why? Because where's the source of his life? Adam. And he's got a sin nature from Adam and as soon as he gets big enough, he's going to start producing what he is. Okay? So how would you describe our position of sin? Could you think of it as something like a genetically passed on illness? Perfect. That's perfect. Two. You get two stars today. Only it's on the spiritual realm. That's exactly right.

Psalm 51.5 says, In sin did my mother conceive me. That doesn't mean that she was sinning when she did it, but she's in sin and so is the father and so is the baby that's produced. In sin did my mother conceive me.

So everybody in Adam, in Ephesians 2.1, is declared to be dead in trespass and sin. Dead meaning separated from God and stuck in their trespasses and their sins.

And then 1 Corinthians 15.22 kind of sums it all up and says, anybody know off the top of their head 1 Corinthians 15.22? In Adam all die. Now this word When you study Paul's epistle, this word in, or in the beloved, or in him is 140 sometimes. But I don't think anybody has ever counted up how many times in Adam is used. Because we all start in Adam, right? Where we all came from. In Adam all die.

So the results of our position in Adam, our source, we were dead to God. and we were alive to sin. So, whenever you're dealing with a non-believer, this is who they are. This is who you were before you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. You were dead to God and alive to sin. You came from sin. You are sin.

Nobody's smiling. This idea that the world propagates that I'm doing the best I can and God's going to grade on the curve and I'll do enough good things. The problem is he doesn't accept Adam. So the trick is that if you could come from somebody else, maybe if you could get on Starship Enterprise and go to some other planet.

The problem was if you ever watch the show, everywhere they went, they all had sin. We're Klingons, we're sinners. So that's your position of sin. So how would you describe our nature of sin? See, if you'd have read the book, this would have been so easy. You know, could I like continue on, I guess, with that genetic sort of thing? nature of sin would be in a way like maybe feeling sorry for yourself because you're born with a genetic illness. I don't think you know that you are though. How about when you're first diagnosed with it? First diagnosed with sin? When's the first time you got diagnosed with sin? Probably becoming a Christian because until then you don't even know You have it.

We were laughing the other night, we were talking about, and Paul in 1 Corinthians, he's warning the Corinthians not to live out on the edge of sinful danger. And so I told him, I said, well I grew up a Catholic, and when you get to be a young boy in a Catholic environment, the whole deal is how far can you go before it's a sin.

Yeah, and what's interesting is that do you have a choice of where you came from? Do you have a choice about the fact that you sin? Yes, you do. You don't have a choice where you came from, but you have a choice about whether you're going to sin or not, don't you?

So the answer to the question is because of our fallen pregenitor, Adam, Each one was born into a doomed humanity. That's our position. Our position of sin resulted in what? A sinful being. You see that? Like I said, nobody that came from Adam wasn't a sinner. They're all sinners. All of us.

A sinful being in life and therefore the propensity for that life is sinful. You know what the word propensity means? Inclination to sin. Sure, you have an inclination to sin. You know somebody said to me, I hate it when I sin and my answer was I had loved every sin I ever committed. I did it purposely. I wanted to do it. Nobody forced me to do it. Every single one of them I wanted to do. That's right. My sin nature said go for it. I said I'm there.

So Ephesians 2.3 says by nature were the children of wrath.

God does not have to pick out the good guys because there aren't any. They're all by their nature under wrath. So in this condition we are natural Now listen to these descriptions, we are natural, we are fleshly, we are carnal, if you're a believer, we're separated from God. The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, and here's the kicker, neither can he know them.

What if he wanted to know them? Again, I refer back to my Catholic background and all these guys going into seminary and studying and end up being a cardinal, maybe the pope. They have studied and studied and studied. I went to Jesuit schools my whole life and there's no group of men better educated on the planet than the Jesuits.

The problem is they cannot know the things of God if they're in Adam. and they'll have a thing, you know, oh, here's the scientific reasonings of the things of Revelation, or, you know, they just turn red, and they do all this stuff, and they go to the Bible, and we'll sit and we'll go, man, they're so stupid!

Because they think they know, or these doctors of divinity, and whatever, and you're just thinking, what the heck? It is what it says it is. Why are you making it... And the reason we look at that and say, well how can they be so stupid? Here's the answer. You know, God is broadcasting on channel 7 and they're listening on 9. For an example. It's impossible.

Here it says in 1 Corinthians 2.14 that they do not accept the things of the Spirit. and rejecting anything from it. Yeah. It's important to understand it isn't because, you know, the people on this side of the room are probably a little more spiritual and cool than the ones on this side.

Every son of Adam fits every one of those descriptions. Every single one of us fits every description. I have some friends of mine that are believers and this guy's wife thinks that some of us are good seeds and some of us aren't. I said, well, I'm definitely one of the bad ones.

That's not a question of mine. That the good people are sort of special. She's not reading the same Bible I'm reading. All of these discussions, all of these pronouncements in the Word of God about the way Adam operates and functions, it isn't because some atoms are dumber than others. They're all that way.

The natural man cannot receive the things of God. He can't. It doesn't matter whether he wants to or not, he can't. He doesn't have the capacity. It's like Kurt's got a diesel truck. If you go out and fill it up with regular, will it run? No, it won't.

And then it seems like there's a built-in safeguard, is that as soon as, you know, you start thinking that you know more, then you get to come up against the pride, sin, like, and then people want to, you know, kind of puff you up and put you in a higher place than You know, so it's like kind of built in, you get to... Well, and that leads to the next pronouncement. Does the sin nature, does the natural fallen man ever improve or change?

How many think he does? I think you asked this last week, so I know the answer. How many think he doesn't? How many think he doesn't, he cannot change, he can't improve? He can't! Did Adam improve during his life? Did he stop sinning once God busted him? I don't think so. He lived 900 plus years. I think he probably did at least two sins. Maybe three. The fallen nature never changes, much less improves.

John 3.6, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. You could substitute any word in there. That which is born of sin is sin. That which is born of natural is natural. Do you see that? The Adamic nature is self-centered. The sin of sins. Got to go to my next page. Therefore, totally against God and that is irreparable. And that's what Randy was reading.

Romans 8 says, for they that are after the flesh do mind of the things of the flesh. The point is that if you are from the flesh, that's all you pay attention to. You can't pay attention to anything other than that. You don't have the capacity to do it. They that are after or from the flesh, they pay attention to the things of the flesh. The natural things, the worldly things, the unspiritual things and the things that aren't of God. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God. You know what the word enmity means? What's the word enmity mean? Hostile? More than that. Butting heads? More than that. More than that.

You're reconcilable enemies. It's like the Jews and the Arabs. You're reconcilable. There's no way that they will ever be reconciled. The natural man is at enmity with God. It isn't that God hasn't resolved the issue on his side, it's that they won't on their side. Because they're at enmity. They're not subject to the law of God, neither indeed here it comes again, neither indeed can they be.

You know, we Americans are big proponents of free will. We've mentioned free will two or three times here. Not only do they not do it, they can't do it and they don't want to do it. And sometimes when we talk to our friends who are lost, we can't understand why they wouldn't want to do it.

Why couldn't they? Why wouldn't they want to come to Christ? Why wouldn't they want to? They're centered right in Adam, and here you're talking to an Adam person. And they don't have any interest in what you're telling them. Why not? They don't want to give up sin. Okay, but what's the underlying reason down here? It's foolishness to them. It's foolishness to them. They don't want it. You see that? And that's one reason why I think if you're ever talking to somebody about the Lord, stick to the Word of God and don't embellish it or anecdotal evidence. Just let the Word do its job.

Paul said that, so then that they that are in the flesh cannot please God? Paul said, I'm carnal, I'm in Adam, I'm sold under sin. So I'm going to read a paragraph from Miles Stanford. So many dear Christians just keep plotting or racing through the deadening routine of their multitudinous church activities. I don't think he's talking about you guys.

Expecting that in time self will change for the better as they grow. But self never changes into anything more and more of the same. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. Sometimes the self is entirely bad, as when it's angry, spiteful, unkind, unjust, untruthful, unloving, slyly spiteful. In other cases, a good exterior conceals an evil heart.

That's what you were talking about. when we are proud of our humility, conceited about our Christian service, boastful of our orthodoxy, and an over-forwardness and obvious conceit at the sound of one's own voice spoils many prayer meetings." Don't you love that statement? We've all been there. The guy is praying and you look up and I wish I had this in front of me.

So, let's talk about the natural man for a minute. The natural man, the term sukos is used six times in the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 15, 44 and 46 which reference to the body or an organism that's adapted to the soul in contrast to the spiritual body, an organism which will be adapted to the spirit. That's the one basic difference. I shouldn't say it that way. That's one of the differences, that when we get new bodies, they will be adaptable for spiritual life. The one we got now isn't. The one we got now is adapted to natural life.

1 Corinthians 2.14 which I've quoted two or three times, the natural man does not receive or accept the things of the Spirit of God.

James 3.15, this wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. Would you say that any advice you get from the earth that's natural would be demonic? Pretty aggressive statement for James, isn't it? Would you say it's demonic? Not always. Tell me, give me an example of when it wouldn't be. If you eat an apple a day, it keeps the doctor away. Great. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. What are you trying to preserve there? Your money from the doctor. Trying to keep a sinful body moving. Or if you drink a lot of water while you're preaching, it's good for you. You know, that kind of thing.

So what I'm trying to do is draw a contrast which is pretty hard for us to accept. That natural things do not contribute to our spiritual life. I don't care how many apples you ate, how much water you drank, how much wonderful logic you have. can be drawn from this actual world to help people understand the connection. Yeah. And it's interesting, most of those illustrations are in the Old Testament from a natural standpoint. And that's why sometimes when you read what, you know, the word Jesus used as a parable, you think, what is he talking about? Because it's a spiritual idea. Yes, ma'am. I'm confused. What's new? Okay, so there's nothing that we can do. But it is a temple. So we're taking care of it. So are they in conflict with each other?

Or is it because if you're not healthy, how? That's such a great question. If I was healthy, he couldn't have gone on to where I live in a sinful body as a believer. And it is, I'm told it's the temple of the Holy Spirit, that the Spirit of God actually lives inside this decaying, rotting, falling away body.

Should I take care of it? Answer, yes you should. Why? Because if God's going to use it, you should make it available to him in as best shape as you can, I think. You shouldn't watch what you eat or eat apple a day so that you don't die earlier. That's in God's hands. Yeah. Right.

You know, until my knees got arthritic, I ran every day for 40 years. And sometimes I'd be out there running and maybe doing an extra mile for me, self. And the thought would hit me, you know, the real reason you do this is so that God can, you know, you can keep moving. Lewis Barry Chafer, at the end of his life, when he loved teaching and knew God called him to teach, he couldn't climb stairs anymore. at Dallas Seminary so he'd make the students carry him up to the next class and carry him down to the next one.

It was cool. He used his body right to the end. Miles Stanford was using his body the day before he died. He was still writing even though he had terrible edema and was in lots of pain. He was still cruising and then he went to bed and died. I had a heart attack and died.

So is there a balance? Because we don't do it to preserve it, but we do it to present it. Yeah, I think the word balance is an earthly, natural word. I think like everything else in Romans 12 when God says present your body a living sacrifice. Okay, you've got it. Whatever's going to happen to it, I'm the steward of it. Whatever you want, it's yours. Do with it what you want. There's no balance, it belongs to him. Anybody else?

Okay, Jude 119. These are ones who cause division because they are worldly minded, or you could say they're merely natural. devoid of the Spirit, not having the Spirit. It's interesting that in Jude, worldly-minded people are devoid of the Spirit of God. So would you say the natural man has limitations? Yes. How limited are they? Bless you. How limited are the natural man's capacities?

From a spiritual standpoint, it's total. Yet, I think a lot of times we use our own anecdotal experiences to verify a spiritual event. Like my experience makes it verifiable and real rather than the word of God. It's true of me because it happened to me. It's true because it happened to me. not necessarily. Second Timothy 3, 2-5, this is a pretty good description of what an Adamic natural man is. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power, and he says, avoid such men as these.

We don't think as believers that our Adamic old nature fits this description. We're convinced that our Adamic old nature is better than them guys. Aren't we? Aren't we? All you guys aren't very honest. We all think we're better. Naturally. But we're not.

Your old man and my old man is despicable beyond description and that's why when you study Galatians and Timothy and others and gives these descriptions of who Adam really is, who he really is, how would you as a believer come to the point of denying yourself? You have to learn this about yourself. What was the first question that we asked today? Why is it important that we learn something personal about our history and Adam? Because you won't abandon Adam unless you're forced to. Unless you don't like him so much that you'll walk away from him.

Do you agree with that statement? doing something else. I would think too that also it's important when the Holy Spirit convicts you of something that you realize kind of which way you're going, what you're dealing with. Do you know what I mean? No, I don't. I don't know if I can explain it. like let's say the Holy Spirit convicts you that something that you did is a sin, I guess. It's not until you... Something that you didn't previously think was? Yeah, you can kind of justify it in your head, oh maybe it is, and then it's like, oh yeah, no it is. Yeah.

That's part of understanding, learning about who Adam is, and learning that this may not be one of the big seven deadly ones, but this is not of the Lord, this is not of the Lord, this is of the flesh, and so therefore by its very nature it's sinful. What's the definition of sin?

We better talk about that. Falling short of the mark. It isn't a bunch of bad stuff. It's missing the mark. What's the mark? Perfection. The Lord Jesus Christ is the mark. Anything short of him is sin. Paul says, hey, whatever is not of faith is sin.

Oh, I'm ducking. I was I was wondering. I had this great thought in my mind. No, but basically, You know, we all have the sin nature still, or we still have the Adam part of us. But when Paul says, you know, these other kind of people are really evil, don't be with them, but we are them, how does that work? Okay, that's a good question. Everybody understand the question? If we're not supposed to be with them dirty rotten dogs over there, and we discover we are them, the question, the real question is, am I them? If I'm a believer, I'm not them.

I have them in me because I still have the old Adamic nature but I also have the resurrected life of Christ in me and that's who I really am. Is it kind of like, have I kind of thought of it in my head is that because we are the Church of the Bride and I think of myself, I was a Smith, but now that I'm married to Kirk, I'm now a Deacons. That's who I really am. Although I've always I was born a smith and I'm related to a smith and a smith is a part of my family.

Is it like that? No, that's a great analogy because it says that you are going to be the very bride of Christ. And in order to be the bride of Christ, you have to be like him. Understand? You cannot be associated with what isn't like him, which means everything of Adam at some point has got to go.

Does that make sense to you? Yes. But it's got to go, but we don't do it. No. We get pruned, right? Well, that's the whole idea of what the course is about, the identification with Christ's death, prayer and resurrection. That's the whole idea. The only way you get qualified to be the bride of Christ is by going through that cross. See?

And another great blessing is that when you finally get to leave this planet, guess what you leave behind? all of Adam. Hallelujah. That's why mature believers, when it's their day to go, they're not too sad about it. I finally get rid of all that I was in Adam. It stays here. I'm gone. What's left is the resurrected life in Christ and my essential identity is in Him. No more sin. Really cool. You've got a wrinkled forehead. Yeah, I do.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around, like at the point of salvation, how does the man, the academic man, how would he even choose Christ? Oh, what a great question. Everybody hear the question? No. If we're this natural guy who doesn't receive the things of the Spirit of God, we can't know them. At the point of salvation, At the point that the gospel is presented to you and you believe it, how could that possibly be? How could it possibly be? The Holy Spirit. And you know what's cool about that? It is the last act of the natural man. You know why?

From a positional standpoint, what happens to Adam the minute you receive Christ? What happened to your Adamic old man? No, he's dead. No, he got crucified. No, he's condemned. You got separated from him. That's what happened. So he made a decision to believe in Christ. Bad choice on his part.

So where do our personal sins come from? They have to have a source. They come from Adam. If by careful study of the above we allow the Holy Spirit to impress us with the awful truth concerning our history in Adam, we will be better able to appreciate the wonderful remedy our Father has provided.

Because as you understand who you are in Adam, there's nothing about that that you're going to like. You're going to want to be free. There's going to come a day in your spiritual life when you look at God and say, you know what, Father, you did the right thing to me. You crucified me. Thank you for doing that. Because I don't want to have to live there anymore. I'm free.

So to keep it in the context that we have, how would you describe what substitutionary death means? Everybody know what I mean by the word substitutionary? Anybody watch basketball yesterday? They took the starter out and put the sub in. Somebody went in and substituted for the starter. What would you say substitutionary death is? What does it mean? It means that somebody died in your place. Why were you going to die? Death means separation. because from Adam you sin.

And once you did that in the garden, you got the death penalty. There's no 30 years of hard labor in this game. It's death penalty only. So somebody's got to take your place and die for you. So substitutionary death means that Christ made peace through his blood And he paid the penalty for your sins. Penalty. You have a penalty for every sin that you commit. Penalty is the same for every sin. Death. Separation. The eternal death.

Now, once the substitutionary death is in place, and once this guy that Laban talked about makes this decision to believe in the person and work of Christ, He finds out that all of his sins, and that's the beginning of it, all of his sins have been paid for on the cross.

He's not ever going to have to meet them. He's not going to have to die for them. And when you read Romans 5, 1 through 11, you discover that the substitutionary death of Christ was total and complete. Nothing left over for you to do. being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins.

I'm going to talk about this today a little bit at the Lord's table. Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Gone. So that substitutionary death is the first understanding of the believer's life in Christ. And that must be made clear.

I was reading something, I think, about sacrifice, like God needs a sacrifice for sin, like he didn't need all the cows and everything that people sacrificed, but he needed that sacrifice because he can't tolerate the sin. Jesus had to be sacrificed, like there's no other way around it that would satisfy God. So that's where the sacrifice comes in the first place. God couldn't just go like, oh yeah, I hate sin, so everybody's good.

Yeah. Does everybody understand that premise that there's no other remedy from God's perspective? for sin other than death because God, because of his righteousness and his holiness, can't have sin in his presence. And he warned Adam, you know, the day that you eat this thing, you're going to die. You're going to die physically and you'll be separated from me.

And that's also, I think I read something too, that's why back in the way in the beginning or whatever, God himself couldn't come down to earth because there's so much sin, so God couldn't do it. So it's like Jesus had to come, I know that whole unity and everything and it's confusing, but only Jesus had to come down as man to be able to be in the world, to be able to look at sin, because God couldn't do it. Jesus as a human being, had to be the perfect sacrifice, had to be him. that we go, oh the Jews started the sacrificial thing and they sacrificed cows and everything, but the first sacrifice was in the garden because something had to die because God clothed them in animal skins. Yeah, where'd he get them? Yeah, it wasn't, um, can you take your skins off for me? Something died. The wages of sin is death. Something had to die. And God provided the remedy even for Adam.

Well, we were going to do a cool exercise, Romans 5, 12 through 19, pick out the seven ways in which Paul insists on the fact that Adam's act of sin affected his race, and there are seven of them in there. But we don't have time for that. So, you can do that on your own. To set you up now, what's the difference between sins and sin?

When you read in the Bible, And we're a couple weeks away from really hitting this hard, but when you read in the Bible, and you're cruising through Romans, and you get to Romans 5.11, and up until that time, every reference to sins is plural. Sins. Talking about the acts of sin. After that, it starts to change.

And now you see the word sin S-I-N, not plural, singular, and in most cases it has a definite article in front of it that says thus sinned. So what's the difference? Jesus became sin? Jesus became sin? Okay, but what's the difference in just the two terms?

Sins are the acts of what we do. Yeah, kind of like that whole thing. But the ultimate sin would be not the acceptance of Christ. Close. The sinful nature. Yeah. When you see the word sin, it refers to the nature that you have, that you got from Adam, that is the producer of those sins. So what we're going to learn over the next few weeks is that God not only on the cross of Christ paid the penalty for your sins, but he did something about that sin nature too. He just didn't leave it so it could continue to pump out sins. He did something to put it out of business.

Any more questions? I'm sorry I didn't get through the class and Randy's subject next week is going to be physician, but it's going to be good. Do you have handouts? I don't actually not yet. Are you not going to use it? I mean, I am. This is my first time teaching the style. I'm totally not prepared. Oh, that's OK. I can email folks. But if you have questions for next week, just bring them next week and hand them out. OK.

Next week, we're going to. Randy's going to talk about position and condition. So that's going to be another subject that we need to understand Adam. We need to understand position and condition. We need to understand sin as we work up to the cross. Let's close. Father how we thank you for your son the Lord Jesus Christ. How we thank you for the rescue from the whole environment of Adam. and that we are positioned now in your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray in his precious name.