Principles of Position, Lesson 4

We left off on question number six. I think we're going to get through these halfway through the class, Mike. You think? Okay, you ready? Yeah, maybe. Unless he's gunning for me. Alright, well let's look at question 6. We really kind of covered this. We actually talked quite a bit about it in one of the previous classes and said let's mark that one off. But let's go back and just review it here real quickly. So we're on lesson 4, question 6.

The question is, why can't a Christian rely on Hebrews 10.4 for security?

So before we answer the question, let's go back and read Hebrews 10.4. It says, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. So why is that mentioned here? in Hebrews, being a New Testament letter or book, why is the Old Testament sacrificial system brought back up and what is its limitation?

We're talking about security. So let's think back to the Old Testament believer. They were told to bring perfect sacrifice, male, unblemished, etc. And they would do that on a regular basis to atone, which is to cover their sins for how long? For the period of a year. So was that security for them? Temporary. So one of the things we could say about the Old Testament sacrificial system was that it was temporary.

And that it had to be what? It had to be repeated every year, that's right. And it required that a substitute would die in the place of the guilty. And the Old Testament believer would literally place their hand on the head of these animals as if to show their sin being transferred to this innocent perfect substitute who would then go and shed its lifeblood in place of the guilty sinner. And so we have that picture, and it was the picture that the Lord wanted those Old Testament believers to see because it pointed forward to something. Question?

Is that just like one time of year they were to do that? Does that mean that all of a sudden they committed that year and then after that it's like it accumulated again? Or what recourse did they have any recourse from that point in between that year time? My understanding is that it was for the year. So year previous. Yeah, and so the fact that you had to have a priest that was of the line and so forth to actually represent you for the coming year? That's what Susan told me. I was just thinking, because then if you die during that year, you'd have sins that weren't counted. That's right. You can probably predict already what you're going to do.

Yeah, you know, we'll talk about this in a little bit here, but I had a conversation even just last night about some of this in terms of how do you go about confessing and the sin, and we talked a little bit about the Old Testament and the New and how that affects the outlook of a Catholic in this way. There were some interesting perspectives that were shared with a friend of ours last night.

In this situation, we're talking about security and the fact that they would go through this Old Testament Levitical system of sacrifice, and here we have in the book of Hebrews, it talks about the fact that those sacrifices, the blood of those bulls or those goats could not take away sins. So what is different about the sacrifice of Christ and its security for us in this age?

This is the old way covered. It didn't take away. Okay, we talked about that, that's right. So we drew actually the Passover house as an example, and we said that those that had trusted the Lord for his provision of the sacrifice would take the blood of the innocent lamb or bull, and they would place it on the doorpost and the lintel, and that when the Lord saw the blood covering the guilty sinner, the Lord would literally pass over that house in terms of its sin judgment. And so it was a temporary passing over. And it was looking forward to a point in time when that sacrifice would be completely satisfied.

And that happened when? It happened on the cross. But why? Why is this a permanent, secure satisfaction of the sin debt? And why not the animal? I remember talking to the kids about this last week. Okay, so let's just say, has anyone taken a sacrificial lamb to the altar lately? Where is the altar? Good question. Some might try to tell you where it's at, or they have a temporary replacement for it.

But no, we're not going through that motion because we're relying on the provision that the Lord Jesus made. But my question still stands, why is this a secure sacrifice? And why is it permanent? And why do we not continue to find these yearly sacrifices? What happened here?

I think it's the value of the sacrifice. Since the living God sent his own son and he has like infinite power to cleanse all sin, that's the difference. Okay, what are you thinking? Well Christ became the substitute for that lamb because of his being that changed forever salvation. Okay, so that's an interesting question. What is Jesus called in the book of John? Right there in the beginning. What? The Lamb of God. The Lamb of God who what? Why is Jesus a lamb? What does that mean? So all that had been done in the Old Testament Levitical system was pointing to not a perfect lamb as an animal, but the Lamb of God who was a man. Why a man? Because he had to be like us. I was reading Ruth last night. It's called the Kinsman Redeemer. He was one of us. Also, he was willing. He was willing?

The animals certainly weren't. I don't think. He was in Acts, I think, 20 or 28 or something. It says it was the blood of God, but the blood of Jesus, who is God. He was infinitely able. His blood was worthy. Okay, that's the ticket for this. He was a man. You're a man. He was willing. You could be willing if you wanted to be.

But if you were to die on our behalf, and willingly so, as a man, like one of us, would it be worthy of paying the sin debt? No. No, it would not. Why? Okay, so we're talking about the worth of the blood. Okay? Your blood as a representative of your life, contains something that the Lord Jesus' blood did not contain. What is that? Sin. Sin. There's a difference there.

It was the perfect blood of God himself, right? And that's the worth, the value. So, that's the reason why we can't die for someone else's sins, because we don't have the qualifications of satisfying the sin debt. There was also a covenant between the father and the son way back. And then there's that. It was a plan. That's right. I think that's a good point. Yeah. No, that's good.

And this is something that we talked about in question four when we looked at Leviticus 1711. And so remember that we talked about it's the blood that makes an atonement for the soul. So that provision that the Lord allowed for in Leviticus 1711 was still in effect on the cross. However, we now have the perfect man, God-man, being willing, being our kinsman redeemer, if you will. And so we could say that for question number six, why can't a Christian rely on Hebrews 10 for security? Because we have something far greater than an animal sacrifice.

Now, is it secure once and for all? that atonement. Are you sure you don't have to keep going back and putting blood on the doorpost and the lintel so he'll keep passing over every year? Is this a repeat, rinse and repeat thing? For some it is, right? For many it is.

I was talking to my buddies and they were communicating their weekly confessionals and my heart was just really broke for the reality of what they were having to go through there. And we talked about it, but you know tradition runs deep, and it's a hard conversation to have at times, but what they're caught up in is insecurity. They're caught up with a lack of a lack of opportunity to go directly to the Lord Jesus. That veil was torn, wasn't it?

Access was granted. You don't need someone special standing in between any longer. You can now speak to the Kinsman Redeemer. You can speak directly to the Lord Jesus. Not only that, His life is in you. So it's not just direct access in a presence sense. It's personal. Very personal.

Feel good about question six? All right, let's look at seven. How much of this justification, so we talked about justification, what does that mean again? My gavel? Declared righteous. That's right. It is a legal perspective on how God views you, whether or not you are covered in the righteousness of Christ or you remain in your sin. And those are the two perspectives that the Lord has on His creation. And in this case, we're talking about what does that justification have to do with grace? How much is it of grace?

Wait a minute. You chose to believe. But that's still gracious that we could choose to believe. Okay. Just making sure. The entire revelation and implementation of justification is of grace. Absolutely all of it. Does everyone believe that in Christianity?

What are some of the ways that we rework this so that it can involve us a little bit? And the reason I'm asking you is because it's a tendency, right? We have been completely separated from the law, but that's sin nature. wants to pull you right back into it. So what are some of the tendencies that we have to pull ourselves under law in terms of this area of justification?

Roy, you had a question or a thought, maybe? Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. Yep. Did you read the scripture this morning? So it goes back to the feelings thing, right? I think that we're not... our body probably is not as guilty of having all of these rules and regulations to ensure our justification before God. I think that we tend to have these secret feelings that just tug at our hearts about whether or not we're truly declared righteous before God.

I think it's what's going on in the background of our mind. It's like, yes, and then you have a secret, but what about this and this and this and this? Or what if I do this and this and this? Or what if I slip up here or whatever? And so we have these feelings. We talked a lot about that the last couple weeks, right?

What do your feelings have to do with justification? Nothing. Do you believe that, though? We don't accept grace. We want to work for it. Okay, sometimes that work means you need to feel a little bad about it for a while, about what you did, right? Sometimes that work is like paying a penance. I got to pay a little penance for this. I got to feel a little bad about this. I got to kind of mope around. and my spiritual journey, just so that I can feel better about the fact that the Lord is doing what He's doing.

Do you know what I mean? I think it tumbles even further then, because then when you find yourself doing that, you have another feeling that you feel bad that you're doing that. You know? I shouldn't be doing this. I don't have enough faith or whatever. So, something I read, and I don't know if this is true or not, It's like you can't really get rid of the feelings, because we're human beings and emotions and stuff, but we can know that Christ is with us in those stupid feelings. How would you know if that's true or not? You said you read it, you don't know if it's true.

Well, what I did is I went back to Genesis. I'm like, you know, are these feelings mentioned before the fall? You know? like no good and bad, but there were still feelings because, you know, or kind of judgments because Eve is saying, you know, this is good fruit and, you know, can be lured in it. So it's kind of like all those feelings and everything were there when people were innocent. I know I'm going way off track.

That's all right. You're fine. This is related. I mean, We're talking about question seven, how much of this justification is of grace? And I think that a lot of our tendencies to not recognize that all of it is by grace is based on these little feeling things. Like that's where we're at right now.

Others have other things they want to do. They have checkpoints and regulations and rules that they're being measured by, potentially having others, like other a godfather trying to keep you on spiritual track. This is things that people talk about. When I'm recognizing that I'm not acceptable before the Lord because of my sin, I've got to go talk to my spiritual mentor and they've got to help me get back on track. and then I'm going to go confess and go through the process of getting back on a place of God's good side, so to speak.

So, the question is, that's not where we're at, I hope, but if you are, then that's a different discussion. For us, it's a feeling thing. So, you mentioned I read this about We have our feelings, we can't change our feelings, but the Lord Jesus is there in those feelings.

And I said, how is that true? Or, how do you determine what is true? So, we've all got feelings. You've got them right now. So that's a reality, that's part of who we are, our essential identity, our personhood. We have feelings. The question is, what is the source of those feelings? How do you know the source of your feelings? Wow, we're stumped.

How about focus? The source of your sin depends on where the focus is. If the I word comes up, that's the sin nature. looking for notice, right? Do you notice? I think the word source, and we talked about what is a different word for source. Now, we've asked this backwards at the beginning of the class. I'm now asking it the reverse. Position. Good job. From the back, everybody. Welcome. Good job. I think that's what you're saying.

The source of our feelings can be determined by where they're coming from and where our focus is. So if we're focused down on our condition, and our condition is listening to this old guy who is a deposed monarch but attempting to really run and rule, you can get a pretty quick understanding of where your focus is, where the source of your motivation is coming from, etc. You are operating potentially in a sin nature perspective. How do you get your eyes or your focus or your understanding of where your source is about feelings, how do you get back to that place?

You choose it. Okay. You use the volition that God gave you to make a decision. And what does that decision look like? How does it sound like in your mind? Y'all want to hear my mind? How about somebody else's mind? This is the daily walk, isn't it? I mean, this is what's going on as we're walking into class and we're leaving. I talked about that a little bit last week.

I believe that the more time you spend beholding the Lord and His Word, you have a picture of not only what He has done for you, but the Holy Spirit makes that very intimately true in your life. It's true no matter what, but it's the time spent beholding Him through His Word and the role of the Holy Spirit to teach you about who He is and how He produces the living through you. So the time spent beholding Him and understanding what the Scripture says will help you very much in your maturity as a believer understand this stuff. You're going to understand your position.

If you don't understand your position, you're going to replace those feelings with some method of trying to get back on track, right? You're going to... Yeah, go ahead. Jump on in. I think it's more than that. I think it's understanding, like Mike says, it's understanding who you are in Christ, the new creation part. Understanding how that factor is true, then if you don't understand it, that isn't who you are because you are a new creation. I think people can understand who Christ is and study it academically and not have that understanding. So the Holy Spirit will take what is learned in His Word and produce that in your life.

Is that accurate? As you're talking, I'm thinking it's perfectly normal to have feelings about any and everything. But if you have a feeling that you're suspect about or you're not quite sure, then I think, like you were saying, going in the word to back it up. If it can't be backed up, then it's not legitimate. And so the key is, an increased understanding of your position, who you are in Christ, what the word of God has to say, and you begin to be an objective faith-based thinker rather than an emotion-based self-thinker. I think that's a really good way of putting it.

So let's use an example. Let's say we're dealing with fear. Could we go into the scripture and understand where fear fits in our position in Christ? We can. Is there a place for it? There's not a place for it. So let's say you're dealing with it. You're like, I'm dealing with it. I read it. There's no place for it. Now what? Is it your job to fix that feeling? But you still feel it. You still feel it, don't you? Yep. So how does this change?

If you go back to the scripture, you see that there's no place for fear in your position in Christ, so you recognize, hey, this is not a legitimate emotion or feeling of who I am in Christ, but I feel it. What do you do? I think right at that point is when you engage in a will to believe what God says. And that settles the matter at that point. I think you cannot control what comes into your mind and into your emotions, but you certainly can control how you react to them. And do you think that that reaction, so let's say, That's the first time you've ever done it. The first time you've ever recognized that, hey, fear has no place in my position in Christ. That's not who I am. I still feel it, and so I'm going to engage my will to believe on the truths of who I am in Christ. What do you think is going to happen to this?

Does that change over time? As you continue to go through that access to who you are, access to an understanding of who you are. Do you think that this fear factor, no pun intended, do you think this fear factor changes as you mature? Do you mature? And do your feelings become... Go ahead.

Well, I was just thinking of a case in point of the Holocaust and the Jews and the persecution under Hitler. A group of believers were praying for their persecutors and they have fear, real fear in their feelings. But God gave them the peace in that situation to trust Him that going through this He would be all sufficient and He would be glorified. And so they were able to actually pray for those that they were afraid of. And their testimony is that God gave them peace in that process.

That's a good point. Do you think that when you decide to believe God against whatever your feelings are, that there's a subsequent feeling on that side? I think there is. I think God gives you rest about what you believed in. When was the last time you did this? Yesterday. Cool. Alright, we're getting somewhere. So, you can replace this word with whatever, okay?

Whatever the emotion is that does not line up with the new man in Christ, okay? Whatever feeling. My purpose here is, yeah, we're talking about how much of this justification is of grace, and we're trying to talk about what creeps in and steals the confidence that we have about how the Lord views us as this new man. But I do think that this is somewhere where the rubber meets the road with this whole course, this whole think position. We're going to hit this over and over and over again.

But you're being transformed, right? You're being transformed. Does the Bible tell us that we're being transformed into the image of Christ? That Ephesians 4 passage comes to my mind. This is what we've been taught in Christ. We have put off the old man, which is deceitful and is continually being corrupted. That we are being transformed, and this is passive, as God's Word, in the thinking of our minds. And we have put on that new man, which is according to God's standard in righteousness and holiness. Do we really believe that? If we focus on that process, the fullness of Christ about the measure and the status and that our knowledge of the Son of God leads us into a fullness of who we are in Christ.

So there's a process going and your instance of this emotion and going through what we just talked about, I've heard some people call it the faith rest drill. I don't like the word drill as much, but I've heard it referred to in that way. So, boom, emotion hits. You have to align your mind back to the Word of God, because the Word of God is going to ground you in what is true and what is not true. and you choose to believe, as Mike mentioned, you choose to believe in what is true, and then it is the Lord's job to bring rest and peace to you in that instance. And it is the Holy Spirit who is transforming you into the image of Christ, that fullness of Christ that Ephesians talks about. One question right here real quick.

In reading the Green Letters, When we talk about our position, our source, then our condition gets stronger. I mean, the fear, you know your position, so then your fear gets less. You can let go of it sometime. I mean, but that's, in my life... So what you're telling me, and let's see what the rest of the class thinks about it, because I think it's interesting. You're telling me that the more, let's call it the faith rest drill, just because we've got an illustration of what that is and we'll just give it a name real quick. So, you're saying that the more often you exercise your mind through the faith rest drill, your position becomes more in line with your condition. Or, I should say, maybe your condition becomes more in line with your position. That's why I said it differently. That's why I fixed it.

Is that what you're saying? Do you guys agree? Are we all in different places with this? Not in position, but in condition. Good point. So the young believer who you have a problem with, and they have a problem with you, maybe has a different amount of distance between where the Lord has them, but in their position you share the exact same thing. That's a good place to start any kind of conversation, isn't it? Regardless of where people are. Wouldn't that help in arguments and things? Sure would. Let's go back and talk about not where we are conditionally, let's talk about where we are positionally, because we can agree 100% on it.

In fact, you know, you talk about, there's these sales tactics where, you know, you ask, let's say you got three questions, and you ask one, you get a yes, you ask two, you get a yes, then you drop the big one, and they're so used to saying yes. Well, if you agree a bunch here, You might find out that this stuff didn't really matter all of a sudden in the same way you thought had you started down here. And by that I mean the sin nature and new nature back and forth issue. Yeah.

Well, I think one of the key things there is that I think the Holy Spirit convinces you that that is reality, that your position is reality. So it's not really just a choice between one and the other. I mean, you're persuaded that There is a reality of who I am and the other's not. That's good. And even probably so far as to say the Holy Spirit can persuade you that your feelings aren't really all that important. That's his job. Yeah. Man, you guys are teaching. I just got to sit here and ask questions. Let's look at number eight. Good job. I think that we got that one. So this kind of plays into some of what we've been talking about. Question 8.

How is God able to forgive our future sins? All of our sins were in the future when Jesus died. That's true. What if that weren't the case? That's kind of a silly question, isn't it? So let's talk about that. So here we have the cross, the provision. So this is where forgiveness occurred. How is that forgiveness applied? Is it applied backwards, forwards, forwards not backwards? How is it applied? Forever. Forever. Everything. In the future and in the past. Right? What do we call that? Complete forgiveness. Yeah. I don't know. The way I see it in my mind, it's not eternal past, right?

Because sin had a point in time where it entered. So it starts at a point in time where sin entered the world and it goes on into eternal, like for eternity, to the point where, well, we have down here. Does it literally go back to the first sin and go forward to the last? I think the reason it does that is because the satisfaction for the insult of sin, God is the one who has to be satisfied. And so because it is him that has to be satisfied, it has to cover all sin for all in the time-space reality, also sin in eternity, which is from In that case, it would be past sins.

Okay, so that's interesting, right? I mean, it's not eternal in the sense that we view God's being, but it definitely has a beginning, I think. It has an end in terms of actual sin being committed and being forgiven, but it has a future effect. I was just a thought. We are talking about human sin. Right.

And his death, when we say covers all sin, would be misleading because the angels sinned. And that is not Christ. Christ covered that too. He covered all sin of all time by any creature. But can the angels take advantage of that? So wasn't Satan an angel? So that's covered? Well sure, now think about it. What is the issue of the cross? Why the cross? Why the death of Christ who is the son of God? It's because God has been offended by sin. So the whole issue is between God and God. And it accrues to us because graciously he offered salvation to us and it does take care. I use this example all the time.

The guy across the street that lives in the White House, are his sins paid for? Is he going to heaven? Not unless he believes. Are the sins of the angels paid for? Yes they are, because God has to be satisfied about the entire sin issue. Are they going to get saved at some point? No, they're not.

That's where this doesn't work, by the way. I'm just pulling up something I remember hearing that Satan can go to heaven or something. Did you read that? Did you want to know how you can know whether that's true or not? Yeah, the Bible. But Satan did go to heaven, right? Like with Job? Yeah, no, I mean, he started there, right? He's the accuser, so he had to be there to accuse.

The verse is Romans 6.10, for the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. Once for all.

We call it unlimited atonement. Others call it limited because some, and then we talked about how there are some that have a different perspective on some of these things, and we used the Calvinist tulip example. But we go back to death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. That's our system.

It's called the Identification Truths and it's scriptural. Every bit of it. It's not inferred. It's all in the scripture. It's laid out. So this whole death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding provides much to us of which unlimited atonement for sin is one of those provisions. And I think you're right. The issue was not with human sin alone, it was with sin as a period.

But God does not give the angelic realm the ability to choose to believe in the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross. They have a one-time choice between them and the Father. They're their creator, I should say. Father's probably not the right term for them. And that's still gracious. Still gracious. Yeah, they were created with direct...

I mean, they were the most intelligent beings. They were designed to literally glorify the Lord in all that they did. And then as the creation expanded into the human race, they were given the role of messenger. gracious access and, you know, we see them singing and literally rejoicing at the sight of what the Lord did because they had access. They had that, you know, that droid high-level access of what God was doing over the whole earth as he was creating us.

Question? Well, what I was driving at when I said what I said is when he died for a sin, if you're going over, What allows men to be separated or to die in their relationship to God forever? Is it not that we die in our sins if we do not trust that His work has satisfied God? And so those sins, though they were paid for, We die with our own sins if we don't believe that they paid for us.

I think the answer to that is Romans 8.3.

Right. Exactly. That the sin nature has been condemned and if you're attached to it at the time you leave this planet you're going to suffer the outcome. Oh that's in nature. And the same thing is true of the angels. They're locked into that separation from God because of that. So the answer to question 8, one more thought? So are you saying that when the angels decide which way they were going in that point... It's permanent. So does that mean that the angels who decided they were going to stay in heaven with God the Father, that they have the ability to sin? What is sin? What's sin? How do you define it?

You fall short of a mark. And they did. They had wills. We don't know what the choice was other than they followed Lucifer who somehow got enamored with himself and thought he would put his throne above God's and persuaded a third or however many of the angels to go with him and so they willingly turned against their Creator. And at that point, they've got their wills locked in. They can't change. Yeah, it would seem to be a permanent, once-in-an-eternity time choice because we don't see anywhere in the scripture...

Go ahead. Well, that's all right. Where this is really important is those that believe that sin is no longer an issue. That it all depends on our faith. Well sin is the issue. And so you can carry this to an extreme, this unlimited atonement and say God's paid for all the sins therefore I can go ahead and sin indefinitely. And God is not that way. I mean our faith in his word then he saves us. And it is not then giving us the liberty to sin, because it's no longer an issue.

The issue is, he did die because I sinned. So the caveat, or the important part of communicating unlimited atonement, if we're going to use that term, that means that Christ's death covered all sin, and it includes the sin of the unbeliever across the street, so to speak. So I can in good faith tell him that your sins have 100% been paid for. But if I stop there, I'm doing an injustice to the gospel message, right?

That's not the extent of what he needs to know. Just because something is paid for doesn't mean that you possess it. So the question is, it's been paid for, it's yours, but you have to take possession of it. And how is that possession made? By believing in what? And he died for your sins. Your sins. That's right. It is very personal and it's very specific.

It's not that I just believe, so I'm going to go to heaven because I believe. You know, people will talk about, like, I'm a believer. I believe too. Well, the question is, what do you believe in? Because that matters. And then you're trusting your faith rather than his word. If you don't believe in the word, the specific gospel message, then then you could be allowing your belief to ride completely on the fact that you believe in something.

And that's what is valuable for them. Although that could be, I think, a start. Like, that wouldn't be salvation, but that could be the Holy Spirit, like, getting you there. Do you guys agree with that? Yes. Possibly. Well, initially, you know, God requires that all men honor Him as God and they be thankful. That's the initial step. and a man can do that and if he doesn't believe the gospel he believes that there's a God but he doesn't get saved because he doesn't believe the gospel. Right but I'm just saying that could be a step for some people to getting there. So one of the things that I've learned about trying to interpret steps, so if you've got somebody who's like, I believe, I just don't know what I believe in yet, I don't know, I've tried not to make an assumption about where, are they a little bit closer? Right. Are they a little bit further? I think that's what I was saying.

I mean, you are, there's no neutrality, so it's either I guess I'd say there's maybe lots of opportunities, like say for the people who don't believe right now, There's still opportunities until they die. I would say don't focus on that. That's my perspective. Only because I don't see anywhere in the scripture that tells us how to identify people that are getting closer to believing versus further. Oh yeah, no. I wouldn't say that. But it does almost... I have a neighbor who's getting close. Or asking a lot of questions. Is it more important for me to like, oh well, I'm going to focus on this than this other guy.

I think you've got to follow the opportunities that the Lord brings you for sure. but to try to analyze where they are in their relationship to believing. I've seen people go from no to yes, like in an instant. And I've seen people go from no to no over years. And there's no correlation to what the Lord's doing in their heart with regards to what we understand is going on, right?

I think it's important for us not to try to interpret it too much. So let's look at question number nine. Number nine, is justification a matter of position or condition? Why? Both. Your condition won't change unless you're in the right position. Doesn't the justification of your condition turn your thoughts to a position? So the condition moves into position once that justification is believed or accepted. Since justification is in Christ and not ourselves, it's a truth of what?

Position. Okay. It's not a truth of condition. Right. You can't feel it. Okay. You're not feeling justified today. It's what you are. It's who you are. So number ten. So then, I find that very difficult to absorb. when I'm reading those green letters. I mean, you know, I love it, but it's not easy. And so now they don't even know what I was going to say.

But if you're justified, then that's the way God sees you. So then you are righteous. Really, this is what kind of puzzles me. But it doesn't mean that you are righteous. No, why would you want to be righteous in your condition? Because you're covered in the perfect righteousness of Christ. It's His righteousness, right? I'm just telling you that I found that confusing. But anyway, I'm learning... That's okay. No, I think it can be confusing, which is why we've been...

I went through the example of the capes and the cloaks to kind of help us understand what's going on in heaven. Being transformed into the image of Christ is the process of the Holy Spirit conveying what is true of you in your position so that your walk of faith is completely and 100% dialed in to these truths. Are you going to get to 100%?

No. Not here, because we got this stuff. As Vern always grabs this part. I don't know why. I grab this stuff. We got this stuff. So, it's not that we want to better our selves, we don't want to become righteous in and of ourselves, there's no process of righteousness for us. There's no process of us becoming righteous. It is 100% completely covered, and it's not our righteousness, it is Christ's, and it is given to you as a free gift.

Okay? So, number 10, does justification have anything to do with your condition? We've talked about this a lot already, actually. No. Oh! Not initially. But your condition follows your position, does it not? It can. It can, yeah. It sure can. But you can be justified positionally and your conditional feelings can be all over the place. All over the place.

So... The question is, does it have anything to do with your condition? Why are we looking at your condition when it is Christ who we should be looking at, and it is His righteousness? Because that's the way I structured the question. It's a fact to be believed, right? Justification is a fact. The only conditional aspect of justification is whether or not you believe that fact. Okay? Yes? I have a question that goes back to your first question that might fit in with this one. As far as, I understand how justification works. but can people put their own, can be polluted by their own acts of thinking this has to happen before that.

I'm thinking of like baptism, people who believe but they don't think they are, it isn't a completed action until they are actually baptized. So, yeah, people can definitely be confused with sequences in terms of how a church does something or how someone goes, whether or not you're being baptized in the Jordan River on an Israel trip or whatever. So the question is, first of all, we'd have to take baptism as an example. What is baptism?

Does it have anything to do with justification? We'd have to answer that question. So I think that, and the answer is no. I'm not going to go into that specifically, but I think in order to get the sequencing right, we have to understand what is being put before or after belief to confuse that fact. So once I knew what that was, I would ask the question, does this fit what we see in Scripture at all?

Do we see people getting baptized in order to be justified in Scripture? Do we see baptism as providing the result of justification at all? Do we ever see that? Do we see Paul actually forgetting who he baptized? And maybe he didn't even care, like, if it was a big deal at certain times. Is that what he talks about?

And, you know, when he defines the gospel as the death, burial, and resurrection, and whether or not you believe it, where does baptism fit? Yes, it can hang people up, very much so. In fact, my wife comes from a denomination that places a massive emphasis on baptism for justification. But it can very quickly become unbiblical, and that's where this conversation, we have to go back to the facts. What does the scripture actually say? Or is this what we might like to call more of a tradition?

So it would affect their condition because they would think that they had to do something else. But the fact, if they believe, the fact is done. They're good to go. Right. Even if they didn't get baptized and died the day before. Well, the condition is based on belief or unbelief. Right. That's all you got down here in the condition is that new nature believing on who we are in Christ positionally.

So I want to ask this one last question. The true or false, the very last one, but strong meat belongs to them that are smart? What does that mean? That means that only the really smart guys get it. Ah, so the strong survive type thing? So, first one, complete and eternal justification is a gracious gift utterly impossible to be earned in any way whatsoever.

True or false? True. Number two, spiritual growth is much easier on vacation than at home. False. True. False. But strong meat belongs to them that are smart, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." True or false? What? Exactly. I'm going to let that one go. That'd be like bacon. We'll have to fight over it. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for the truths to be believed. We thank you that it has nothing to do With our emotions, it doesn't have to do with our work. We have been separated from all that is required to satisfy you. That you paid it in full for us, and it is a free gift, and it is to be believed personally. We thank you that we have that salvation and that understanding of who we are. and that your atonement is applied to us as believers for eternity. And we thank you that we have direct access to you and your word. And so we just ask that you would work through our emotions as we deal with those through the week, and that we might find ourselves in faith in what you've revealed to be true, and that we might find ourselves resting as you provide it. It's in your name we pray. Amen.