Identification Truths Plus 2012

Okay, here we go, fast. Why did God create... Wow. His nature. Just because he wanted to? He wanted a relationship with us. Why did he create? Why does God do anything? For his glory. That's right. He created for his glory. So, creating for his glory means he wants to manifest the characteristics of who he is. Two creatures that he had created. Okay? If anybody ever asks you why did God do what he did, he does it to glorify himself.

So what does after its own kind in Genesis 1.21 mean? If you read those verses, you'll see that God created creatures and birds and everything after its own kind. What does that mean? You know, a fish, he just creates a certain fish. He doesn't make a fish, he makes something else. He also gave that all... what are you looking for? Oh, we did? Two. Did I give you two? Oh, brother. I'm sorry. Well, that's next week's.

God created all the creatures with all the... well, actually, trees and everything else, with the ability to reproduce, right? And with that ability to reproduce, they have the capacity to reproduce after their own kind, right? You don't see... I know the evolutionists would have you believe this. You don't see figs growing on olive trees. That's right. You don't see birds flying cows, that kind of thing. That's a really important principle in Genesis that everything can produce after its own kind and it cannot produce after somebody else's kind.

Let me give you a good example. A mule is a really good example of that. A mule is a crossbreed between a horse and a donkey. You know what a mule can't do? Reproduce. He can't reproduce. Now, man can manipulate reproduction because God gave him dominion over the creation, but he can't change the essential nature of a species. So a monkey can't turn into a person? A monkey can't turn into a person. That's right. So biologically, question three, the principle of reproduction is the sexual or asexual process by which organisms generate new individuals of the same kind. Reproduction or recreation referred to as a fixed law of progeny.

Four, what was the result or the penalty of Adam's sin and fault? Death. What was the result? Death to relationship with God. What does the word death mean? Separation. So when Adam sinned, he died. God told him, in dying you will surely die. Did he just double speak? In separation from God you would then experience death physically. He was separated spiritually instantly. He didn't die physically for 700 years.

He died positionally to God. Now let's talk quickly about position and condition, something that you guys haven't been through. There are positional truths in the word of God and conditional truths. When Adam sinned, he died positionally. In other words, that's his position before God. It may or may not translate instantly into a condition.

Your position is what's true of you in Christ before God. You're seated in Christ in heaven. That's right. You're seated in Christ in heaven. Your condition is your everyday walking around experience. It may line up with your position, it may not. Spiritual growth is to get your condition to line up with your position. Am I talking too fast?

So if death happens to Adam because he sinned, Adam has this unique title. He's called the representative man. He's the head of the human race. So guess what he can do? That's right, he can recreate after his own kind. See that? So, now that Adam has sinned and been separated from God, when he produces after his own kind, what does he produce? Sinners. He produces some of these really cool, non-sinning people? No. No, they're all sinners, just like him. So the law of like begets like, not only is physiological, it's also spiritual. Do you see that? When did you become a sinner? When you fell down the steps? When did you become a sinner? When you were born. When you were born? Anybody else? When Adam sinned. When Adam sinned, you sinned. That's when you became a sinner. Yeah, just like we were crucified with Christ. Exactly right. That's exactly right. That's the whole purpose of the class.

So that you would understand that just as you are united or were united with Adam, and everything that's true about Adam is true of you, that at the point in which you believed in the person and work of Christ, What he is became what you are. Because you changed man. So, five. So why is every human being just like Adam? Easy answer. Because like begets like. Why are all men condemned then? Because we're all in Adam.

1 Corinthians 5.22, in Adam all die. Now, here's an interesting to me, but the word in him or in Adam or in Christ is used 164 times in the New Testament.

You know why I like that so much? Because I'm a realtor. Location is everything to me. Location, location, and location. So every human being, it doesn't matter really what they've done, it's where they are. They're either in Adam or they're in Christ positionally. If you're in Adam, you're in trouble. If I'm living in Adam, when will I perish? When I die?

When you look at the word perish in Paul's epistles, it's in the present tense. You know what that means? I'm perishing right now. I'm perishing right now. So it isn't I'm going to perish when I die like I'm living in some sort of yellow line until I die. Nonsense. I'm either perishing or I'm saved at any given time. So all men are condemned simply because they are in Adam. and all men sinned in Adam. So just what do you mean when we say a person is saved then? I'm already at question seven.

Don't lose focus. I've got to zing him once in a while just to keep it real. I've had too many weeks of me beating up on him. This is grace payback. Saved from spiritual death. Just the word itself, the person is saved, what does it mean? It's a great inclusive word. Well, we use it to save from the consequences of this sin nature in Christ. Okay, is that all that it means? Is it like rescued? Rescued, okay. A new life. Say that again. It seems like nature doesn't like any empty places so when you're saved in one condition you get another condition. I think the word salvation you could say it's that great inclusive word expressing God's gift of eternal life.

But you are saved from and to. From is really important because that's where most of your focus is. If you're around 20 or 30 years, to gets to be more important than from. OK? Just like sanctification is not just separation from things, it's separation from God. That's exactly right. So here's the interesting thing.

If you look at Romans 1.16, Paul says that I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. The gospel of Christ is 1 Corinthians 15. It's real simple. Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins according to the scriptures. He was buried and raised again according to the scriptures and was seen by many. That's the gospel. The gospel itself, just those words, Paul says, I'm not ashamed of that.

And the reason I'm not is that it's the power of God unto salvation. The power is in the words, not in your fancy ability to communicate them. The gospel itself is powerful. To do what? With the Holy Spirit. That's why it's powerful. Without him there's no power.

So it's to everyone that believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek or the Gentile. So when you look at salvation, or you say a person is saved, he's saved from something to something. Or maybe you could say it this way, he's saved out of something into something. I'm out of Adam, now I'm in Christ. That makes it a different perspective than I have fire insurance and I'm going to this place called heaven sometime. Eye in the sky, by and by.

So I asked, list some of the things that the word salvation might include. I started out with the thought of it rescues from sin and its penalty. That's the first part. The next one I wrote down, it also is the deliverance from the power of sin. That's what identification is about. I put words like safety, soundness, Just like Courtney's been expounding when he's talking about who's slave are you? A slave to sin or a slave to salvation? That's exactly right.

Now, if you think the word salvation only includes to be rescued from your sins and its penalty, you've got less than 10% of the message. Understand what I'm saying? If you think that salvation is that you got rescued from sin, all those really bad things you've done, like falling down the steps, and the penalties incurred, then you've only grasped 10% of salvation. So when I say to you, you also were delivered from the power of sin, what do I mean by that?

This is one of those holy classes where you don't sin very much. The power of sin to separate us from God? The power of sin. It can't separate us from God anymore, because He just sees Christ. Let's make it easy. Like we've been taught upstairs in the sermons, we are saved from having to learn all 613 laws and follow them. the mastery of sin or the requirements of the sin nature, we're free from that by God's grace. But that would only be if you were Jewish, right? I mean, Gentile, you never had them in the first place. Yeah, it's very tough. There's a lot to unlearn if you're Jewish or you grew up as a Baptist. Or a Catholic, like you and me.

We're separated from the sin nature. Isn't that the key? You have to distinguish, when you study Paul's epistles, when you see the word S-I-N-S, sins, they're the things that you do. But when you see the word S-I-N, singular, Usually in the Greek it has a definite article in front of it, it would say THE sin. It isn't sin personified, it's the principle of sin, or it's your sin nature.

It's the thing in you that is the cause of your sin. Now, if you live under a law system, the misnomer is that the law is going to be strong enough and capable enough, especially if with your to overcome the power of the sin nature. Not going to happen. Because you're going to find out that the law itself is the very impetus that kicks off the sin nature.

Identification is the thing that informs you that by being crucified with Christ you have been positionally separated from the sin nature, your sin nature. It's still in there, but you don't have to obey it anymore. If you don't know that information and you try to live the Christian life under a principle of law, it's going to whip you every time. Every time. Romans 7. Yeah. Romans 7, Galatians, the whole book of Galatians is about that. Okay?

So, when I ask the question, question 9, what do we mean by the old man? And I'm not talking about people that are over 60. What do I mean by the old man? Yeah, is that who we were in Adam? It's our flesh. Who is the old man? It's my natural person. Adam? Fallen Adam? It's who I am in Adam. It's the I. What's that? The I. I, not bad. I put it this way, that the old man is everything that I was in Adam.

Everything, which includes the sin nature and the inability to live a holy life. And everything I was in Adam was paramount to being dead to God, spiritually. Totally separated and dead to God. totally alive to sin. Dead to God and alive to sin. I am totally dominated by the sin nature that I have.

And on top of all of that, you know what else I got with that deal? I got a decaying body. And I don't care how hard you work on it, it decayed more today than it did yesterday. You know? It's just going to end up in a grave and you can't do anything to slow it down or stop it. A decaying body. So that's what, all of that includes the old man.

You know, as a woman, it's kind of fun to watch all the advertisements on television, you know, oh, regain your youth, your looks, everything else. No. Well, and then there's a book, a guy sent me a book last year, and I'm ashamed to admit this, but it says, younger next year. I said, if I did write and exercise and do all this really cool stuff, my body would be young. No. No. He didn't read 2 Corinthians 5. My body's decaying. It's in the present tense. It's happening right now. And it isn't going to stop.

Okay, so with that in mind, why is it important to know something personal about our history in Adam? Why is it important that we know about our history in Adam? Ever think about that? Questions that I'm sure you ponder all the time sitting at home, right? That kind of gives us a knowledge of what we ourselves are. Well, that's who you are. See, when you talk about ourselves, what you're really talking about is who you are in Adam. Right. Okay? Right. Why is that important to know that? Well, because there was Adam who was given everything. And everything he needed and what have you. And with all of that, he did not believe God enough to obey him and he fell. Okay, now.

My thought on that was that God is not after some kind of corporate relationship. He's after a personal relationship. And if I realize my personal position, then I can think about pursuing a personal relationship with God. It's not something that's a family relationship or because I'm in the right church or something. It's between me and God.

And it isn't Adam's fault. It's your fault. And I guess it would show why Jesus had to die for us. Yeah. Let me read what I wrote down. We cannot become what we already are in Christ Until we know what we are in Adam, or what we were in Adam. To know who we were in Adam, we must discover what Adam was. Since he's the head of the human race into which we were born, we cannot understand the nature and condition of the life we inherited from him. That life continues to indwell us as believers. If you don't know anything about it, then you don't know what to reject. Because, you know what? You guys are all good guys.

And you really thought when you got saved, all you did, you lived in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? And what you really thought you did was you moved across from the evil branches to the good ones? Don't you think like that? Come on, fess up. The issue is, is that you don't live in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil anymore. You're not evil and you're not good. What are you? You're holy, righteous, you're in Christ. You got down out of the tree, you walked down the garden, and you got up in the tree of life. There's no contrast between good and evil in the tree of life. So stop thinking of yourself as being good, because you're not. You're not.

That's why you need to learn about Adam. Because believers are really quick to reject their evilness, but it's tough for them to reject their goodness because your goodness doesn't measure up to the holiness of Christ and that's who you are. See that? That's why it's important to know about Adam and to know how he functions so that you can reject the whole guy, the whole man and you can rest in the resurrected Christ who is your new man You see that? He's not good. He's holy. He's righteous. And He's life. That's different than being good. Okay? Next question.

What are three aspects of my relationship to Adam? What kind of a relationship did I have to Adam? I had a relationship as a position of sin. I had a relationship in the nature of sin, and I personally sinned. So my whole relationship with Adam has to do with sin.

Not cool. Not cool. So, and we'll get off of this in a couple more questions, but how would you describe your sin nature? Well, maybe ask it this way. Is your sin nature any different than yours? Is your sin nature any different than yours? Or yours? Is it different? Just because you've got your name attached to it? No, the sin nature is not different.

The sins may be different. The production of the sins. So, with the guy that shot all those people in Connecticut, is his sin nature worse than yours? Well, all have sinned and fall short of God. So, God doesn't gauge your acceptance before him based on whether you're a bigger sinner or a less sinner, right? Right? What's the worst sin there is? Is it to murder 20 people in an elementary school?

Rejection of God's grace. It's not to live by faith. That's what it is. I mean, that's a horrible sin. because of the grace that God has delivered. Now, our position of sin resulted in a sinful being. All human beings born in Adam are sinful beings. It isn't that they choose to be sinful beings, they are slaves to sin, right? By nature, in Ephesians 2, they are the children of wrath.

So the guy that, I forget his name, the guy that committed these murders in Connecticut is a child of wrath, but you're not because you're a Rudy Gazzuti guy and go to church on Sunday. Or, you live across the street from my buddy in the White House who isn't saved, who gives a lot of money to charity. He's better than the guy who committed all these murders.

No, he's not. It's the same nature. Exactly the same. When Paul says in Romans 7, in me, that is in my flesh dwells no good thing. He didn't do 80-20 and I'm better than my neighbor. He wasn't Jewish in mentality. He wasn't like the publican and the Pharisee. No good thing in Adam, nothing. Mental illness is, okay, let's talk about mental illness. I'll answer it this way.

What do you think psychiatry is? What is it? Study of what? Study of human. No. What is psychiatry? Study of the sin, nature. It's the study of the sin nature, right? What do you study? You study why man does what he does in Adam, right? Why does he do what he does in Adam? Because he's a sinner. He's evil. So what is this?

If you've ever had a good relationship with a psychiatrist, who will tell you the truth? And I emphasize who will tell you the truth. The ones that will tell you the truth will tell you that they have never, ever really helped anybody. You know why? Look what they're dealing with. How do you help the sin nature? You can't. So our society says, oh we're going to get counselors in there and psychologists in there and psychiatrists in there and we're going to figure it out.

Really? You had 10,000 years? How's it working out for you? Anger management phrase, one simple little... Sure. What's the answer? What's the answer to the problem? Give me all your guns. No. What's the answer? There is no answer, but you know there are band-aids, well the answer is... Is what? Christ. That's exactly right.

But, you know, just because my job is in psychology. And, you know, I kind of go back and forth on this. And, you know, it's like and it's a pain management clinic, you know, and we know we're not. And my boss is a believer, actually, and he's a neuropsychologist.

And, you know, it's it's like, you know, you're not trying for for any, although you know there are some believers in our groups and the patients are too and then we work you know with that too because that makes it a lot easier because you know they're already in line but for the people who aren't it's like not a reason not to try and sort of help you know to put a band-aid on them because they're suffering. Except that the Lord Jesus proclaimed himself as the author of a sound mind. You see, the problem you have when you teach identification is that you can't get people to abandon Adam because they think with a little psychology they can get him to function. or keep them from being a mass murderer or whatever.

There's a ton of, not a ton, but in the post, in the Denver Post today, in the editorial page, there's a whole thing on mental illness versus evil, stuff like that. It's kind of interesting. Mentally ill people do very evil things. Well, there are people that are physiologically mentally ill.

There's no question about that. But what's the source of the problem? Paul goes back to sin. It sure does. It sure does. We live in a sin-tainted world. Even nature is corrupt. Yeah, that's exactly right. So what do you do? Like Holly said, you put a band-aid on the sin nature to keep it from pulling the trigger. You can make all the laws to legislate in the world, but you're not going to change the nature of people. Well, and here's the other thing. In Romans 5, 19 or 20, it says the law came in alongside the sin nature. What happened to the sin nature when the law came in alongside? It exploded. So you put more laws on sin natures, what do you get? More sin.

That's right. So the answer isn't legalism. Right, but there's no way to ignore that. I'm not saying ignore it, what I'm saying is if you really are looking... There's not a good solution, well there is the solution is Christ, but you can't always, how it is, how the world is, is you can't always provide that solution. We should though, don't you think we should? Don't you think we should always provide that as a solution? I think so.

It's tough because Just as a more recent believer myself, I know that when I was in situations when people would try, think that they were, you know, giving me the opportunity to find Christ or whatever, it made me more angry. It made me more rebellious. Who was the me? The old nature. Right? No, I understand it. I understand why. But it wasn't... It wasn't receptive. It wasn't receptive. And to think that people are... Because you...

If the Holy Spirit isn't in it at that time, then that isn't going to happen. And so to say that, you know, if you just always go, always everybody, everybody, tell them, help, this is your solution. Well, you have to recognize that the biblical principle is that Your job is to plant and water. It's God's job to give the increase. Right, right. And you speak an awful lot louder by the way you live than what you say. If the life of Christ is being manifested through you, it isn't because you got all the verbs down right. Right, right.

And so, it's a tough one for me because I see it every single day. Every day. I had a friend who had horrible problems and They would hear voices, they'd look at a license plate and they'd say, well I know what they're trying to tell me and all this stuff and just about destroy them, this person.

And they would put her on all kinds of medications and they finally put her on one and it just fixed it. She was just, she took that medicine. There's the study, the science of psychiatry. from a physiological standpoint has a lot of relevancy. It's the same thing happened to Miles Stamford's wife. Miles Stamford's wife suffered from severe depression and it was a chemical imbalance in her brain. Oh gee, back to the decaying body again. And so they did, they tried different medications and when they hit the right one within an afternoon You know she was fine.

That's right. So where should the focus be in that science? Should it be on the study of psychoanalysis? changing somebody's mind or should we look for and spend our money on finding chemical issues? Chemicals. Yeah, and it's a fine line again because then you want to start slapping medications on people too.

So, you know. No, well, I mean the point is that of all the money that like our society has spent in the last 25 years to increase the longevity of the sin nature and the sinful body, how many years have we added to our lives? Twelve? Twelve years? It's probably going the other way with fast food.

You know, I have a friend in Australia who is an atheist, and he likes to, in the writing, he likes to make fun of me and my belief in Christ. And he said, He said, you and I both know that, and he does know some of the Bible, 3 score and 10. He said, we're living a lot longer, you know. So I went through a couple Sundays on all the obituaries and I put the dates, you know, and everything. And you know, I divided it by the number of people and I came up with about 70. Wow. Years, you know, 3 score and 10. Well, I mean, you think about it.

We have an eternal God in an eternal universe, and you're going to hump around this planet for maybe 70, 75, 80, 90 years, or like Bertha Anderson, 102. So, I mean, what is that in light of who you are in Christ? It's nothing. It's nothing. It's all just a blip. You know, a hundred years from now, Courtney and I will be here teaching the class. I guarantee it.

The problem is, in nature, our old man takes advantage of any opportunity he has to try to get us to think to express itself in natural terms and in human terms. I have a daughter who is a doctor and she just has a dickens of a time getting parents to let her spend enough time with the child to get back to root causes that they want to get a quick fix. Just give me the prescription and I'll take it. Let me get out of here. I don't want to go back to the root cause. Okay, I'm going to move on. We've already talked about question 13. We could spend the rest of the class talking about describing the sin nature. But we've already talked about the difference between sins and sin, right? Everybody got it straight?

Did God forgive both the sins and sin? Yes. I got a yes and I got a no. I got a yes, I got two yeses. How about you guys? Did God forgive both your sins and your sin nature? I don't think he forgave sin. You don't forgive the sin nature, you crucify. Aha! What did he do to the sin nature? He didn't forgive it. He crucified it.

So when you become a believer, positionally, this is the nature that you've been relying on all your life? And you've been trying to give it drugs and analyze it so it'll function better? What really happened positionally? So it was crucified but not killed.

That's exactly right. What's the difference? It's still here. What's your relationship to it? Separated. You don't have one. No. So why are you messing with it? Because you like to pull out your baggage and get a pity party going. Yeah, you want to keep playing with the baggage. Here's the issue. God is finished with your sins.

How come you're not? But see, he can say, okay, because you're human, but I separated you from all of your Adamic humanness. So why are you still messing with it? We still have our bodies. The reason you're messing with it is because you don't believe him. That's why you're messing with it.

You don't believe him. When he says, your old man was crucified with Christ, he's not kidding. And what does He want you to do with that information? Just believe Him. So as you rest by faith in just those facts, that you were crucified, buried and resurrected with Christ, what you got separated from and what you got separated to left sin over there. Sorry to keep interrupting.

So sin would be crucified. No, you're crucified. Okay, we're crucified. Okay, but can I say our old nature, sin you said, was crucified. Our new nature died, buried, resurrected. Old nature, sin, crucified. Only. Not exactly. I'm just trying to figure out how the old nature and the sin nature is still alive. Because it wasn't, obviously then, wasn't buried, crucified, and rose. No, that happened to me. It's still the same. And that brings up my promotion. How many of you have ever read Watchman Nee's Normal Christian Life? I've started. Have you started reading?

So do you have a copy? Do you have a copy? Do you have a copy? I have a bunch of them and I want to give them to people who haven't read it or don't have a copy. I want to give you a copy today. Just ask me. Oh, wait a minute. I can't. It'll have to be next Sunday. I left it in another car.

That book, as simply as can be explained, explains this co-crucifixion with Christ. And I looked for it and couldn't find it. But here's how he explains the activity of the old man. It's like a ship that has a tyrant as a captain and there's a mutiny and they remove the captain from his authority and they appoint a new captain. And so because they have lack of a better place to stick the old captain, they slash him to the mast. The next night comes up a big storm and he's barking orders about what the ship crew should do. And as crew members go by him, they're so used to the voice, they keep listening to him.

Go here and do this and go here and do that. Is he the captain? No, he's not. He's been deposed. Your sin nature is not captain anymore. You have a new captain who is the resurrected Christ. If any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. This new creation is that you're a brand new kind of human being that never was on the planet before. And your source of life has nothing to do with Adam. Nothing to do with Adam. Nothing to do with legalism. Nothing to do with the world. And certainly nothing to do with Satan and his boys.

It's a brand new resurrected life. I'm emailing back and forth with a guy on this legal principle, and he keeps wanting to hang on to the law, and it's because he has no understanding of where to go. He doesn't know about grace. See, if I just say you're dead to the law, what does that mean? I'm now going to be an anarchist? Yeah, you don't know what grace is, you don't know where to go.

If you've been crucified with Christ, buried and resurrected, at least you know, well, I died, I was buried, and now I'm resurrected, so the sin nature is in me, but it doesn't control me. Maybe say it this way. A non-believer is in Adam with the sin nature, and Adam and the sin nature is in him. The believer now is in Christ, but the sin nature is still in him. He just doesn't have to yield to it. Does that mean it's going to say, oh, you figured it out, I'm not going to bug you anymore? No. It's going to get worse. Bugs you worse. Yeah. He's going to yell louder. Now you have a conflict.

And that's where the goodness comes in, because if he can get you dancing good, he's got you dancing. See that? The sin nature has a good aspect to it and an evil aspect. So if you've been really evil, and now he persuades you to be good, he's still controlling you. You see? That's why you need to learn of Christ. Boy, I told Courtney I'd get through this, I guess I won't. Alright, let's see.

How does sin enter the world? S-I-N, not sins, S-I-N. If you read the book of Romans, up until Romans 5.12, it always says S-I-N-S. Starting in 5.12, it says S-I-N.

It says, by one man, the sin nature entered the world, and death by sin. So death passed upon all men. Why? Because they all sinned in Adam. So the sin nature came into the world through this one man, Adam. Oh yeah. And if there hadn't been an Adam, we'd have all been free from him, right? Oh, I forgot the like begets like thing. And that I was there sinning in him. See, if you'd have been Adam, or you'd have been Eve and I'd have been Adam, guess what?

We'd have done the same thing. Exactly the same thing. Why? Because we're just like him. You're not any smarter than him. We'd have done exactly the same thing. Because we're just like him. So, when Adam sinned against God, he was condemned to death, dead to God. Adam being your unsaved head in life, does the same hold for you? Absolutely it does. The phrase, is the figure of him to come, tells us what about Adam and Christ.

And that comes from Romans 5.14. Adam was the figure of him to come. What does that mean? I'm going to get close. What that means is the doctrine of the federal head. There are two men in all of history that matter.

Adam and Christ. you either come from Adam or you come from Christ. If you come from Adam, you get all that Adam is. So via identification with Christ, death, burial and resurrection, what happens? You leave Adam and you now are in Christ. So now what's true of Christ is true of you. Because he's now your federal head. That's what it means. Does that make sense? You have to look at Adam and Christ as heads of races. And the idea is, is not to just get your sins forgiven. The idea is, is to change men.

The head of who you are now is the Lord Jesus Christ, resurrected, ascended and glorified. He is the source of who you are and your standing. God can say to you, hey, I've known you in Christ before the foundations of eternity. How can he say that? Because Christ is an eternal man. before you're saved God can say hey I've known you and Adam since 10,000 years ago or whatever. See? What about all the people before Christ came? What about them? Are they all dead? No. They all came from Adam. Right? Let's take the most famous one, Abraham.

He believed God and what did God say? He was righteous. And what did God give him? He gave him life. What didn't He give them? A position in Christ. You see that? Because God was anticipating the work of Christ on the cross, He could have counted a guy like Adam righteous. He did it to Adam and Eve. You know how He did it to Adam and Eve?

They went and got the philodendrons, which was their remedy for their sin. God brought them skins and said, here, put these on. They did. They're righteous. They took God's remedy to cover their sins. See? In anticipation of what Christ was going to do on the cross. Okay? Yeah, that's what the sacrifices in the Old Testament. Yeah, that's what they all pointed to. Hebrews talks about that in great detail. Sure.

What's a death reigning principle? How do you define a reigning principle? What's a principle, maybe? You want a demonstration of a principle? What principle did I just demonstrate? Gravity. Happens the same way every time. Never changes. When you start talking about principles in Christ, they happen the same way every time. There's a new principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus that has already set me free from the principle of sin and death. I'm in Christ, I am free, positionally it's all done. It's a principle that works the same way every time. Why is it important to see that God has changed his man? Has he changed his man? How many guys are we talking about here?

Two. Adam and Christ. Up until Christ, he dealt with mankind through Adam. Because he was the guy. Christ has supplanted him now as the man. So now God deals with mankind on the basis of grace, not law. Important to know that. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever will. That's not legalism, that's grace. So he now deals with all humanity through one man, Christ. He changed his men. Why is it important for us to know that? We've got to know how we're getting dealt with. through which man? Adam or Christ. And that includes the lost. He deals with mankind.

What did the Laws of Rival Accomplice regard sin? We've already answered that. The end of Romans 5 says that sin reigned unto death and now grace is to be the reigning principle. So if you're from Christ, and you're in him, you now have a new principle that reigns over you. And I know as Americans it's tough to think about reigning anything. We think we're free and we make all our own decisions.

You now live under an umbrella of grace only. So if you go at God from a legal standpoint, guess what? He isn't listening. He's not listening. If you say, I'm going to do all these spiritual push-ups so that you'll listen to me, he's not listening. Sorry, a quick one.

I heard a pastor on the radio say about the law, when the law came in, he says, you know, it's like a speed limit. You know, people, people break the speed limit all the time. And he says, and then there are the people who never break the speed limit. And then they are prideful in themselves for never breaking the speed limit. That's exactly right. They're just going to hell a little slower. Last question. I have a lot of information. Last question. I already talked about that.

At what point in your existence, now let me rephrase it. At what point in the life of Christ did you go into Christ? Understand what I'm asking? Christ was born, lived 33 years, he was crucified, buried, resurrected, and ascended into heaven. At what point on the timeline of his life did you go in to him? On the cross. When? On the cross. What part of the cross? I'd say all three probably. Think about it.

You were put into Christ when he died. because he was made sin, the sin for us. Your sin nature and my sin nature were put on him, identified. That's when you went in. And then what did he do? He died. What happened to you? You died. He was buried. What happened to you? He rose to kainos, brand new kind of life. Where were you? in him.

What if he said from the beginning of time no, if it was all planned? You mean, did God know you from the foundations of eternity? Because you went out of a time space man into an eternal man. Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundations of eternity. He had no beginning. Yeah, so I'm thinking that's when the believer was put into Christ. At the cross.

I'm thinking before that, when it was planned. No, because once you go into an eternal man, there is no before or after. Okay. Okay? So it's important to understand that when you were identified with Christ, when you believed in Him, whenever it was in your life, the Holy Spirit took you and put you in Christ at the point in which He died, because that's when you died. Kind of cool, huh?

So when all of you check out of here, That's why Paul says you go to sleep, you don't die, because you already did. You already died. Now we're going to go to sleep. It's like taking a nap. Cool. You wake up somewhere else. Let's close. Almost 25, Courtney.

Father how we thank you for your word and how we thank you that you did unite us to the Lord Jesus Christ when he died and we are buried and resurrected with him now seized with him in the heavenlies and newness of life and that's our position which can never be changed father we thank you we pray in your son's precious name amen