Principles of Position Lesson 17

Okay, we're on lesson 17, and we had gotten through question 4. I'll bring us up to speed. Question 1 was, what are the two summarized negative and positive aspects of spiritual growth, dead to sin and alive to the Lord? What happens to the believer who bypasses the identification truths when it comes to sinning? Nothing. He's stuck.

Why do we not have to plead for advocacy while living in this world? Because we have two advocates that are, as we saw, that are busy all the time advocating for us. Are there scheduled times that our advocates are to be advocating on our behalf? No. 24-7, always available. Nah. Question 5, Luke 22, 31 and 32, did Jesus pray for Peter that Peter would not sin? So let somebody read Luke 22, 31 and 32. So the question is, Did Jesus pray that Simon wouldn't sin? No. What did he pray for?

He wouldn't lose his faith. Yeah, he wouldn't lose his faith. Now, he didn't mean losing his faith in the sense that he would no longer become a believer in the Lord Jesus, but he was talking about the practical, conditional aspects of living. And he's restoring Peter. Peter had fallen, and that the faith would respond to the Lord's advocacy. Understand what he's saying?

He's saying, Peter, I've prayed for you, and I don't want your faith to fail in me. I'm the focus of your faith, and you've got to trust me with the advocacy I have for you. And there's been this whole issue where Satan has wanted to sift you like wheat, But I prayed for you, that your faith wouldn't fail. Why that? Why would you pray that Peter's faith wouldn't fail?

Because when your faith fails, it's at the point of despair. That's pretty good, yeah. Why despair? Here's a better question. Your faith has a focus, right? Who's the focus? If you're going to despair, what's your focus going to be? Me and the circumstances.

So that's what he's really praying for, that his focus would stay on the Lord Jesus, who is his advocate, and that as long as it stayed there, he would not become self-centered and therefore enter into despair. That's a really good lesson when you think about it. Because you think, well gee, he would pray that he wouldn't sin. No, he's praying that he keeps his focus by faith in the Lord Jesus as his advocate. He gave him grace for true repentance, deep sorrow for his sin, purity of conscience, and restoration of fellowship. And he's saying to Peter, keep your focus on me. I prayed for you that your faith wouldn't fail. You think the Lord Jesus now in the heaven is praised for all of us that our faith doesn't fail?

Absolutely. That's part of his advocacy. It isn't that he's standing before the Lord saying, okay, yeah, Russ did so and so and so and so. But I'm the advocate. I'm also praying that Russ's faith doesn't fail. That it stays. And trust me as his advocate. I think it's terribly important that Jesus said when he turned back to strengthen his brothers, giving him promise that he would be useful. Yeah.

I pray for you that your faith not fail and you, once you have turned again, what would you do? You would be in the service of the Lord to what? Strengthen his brothers. If you're functioning by faith, you don't need strength for you, do you? If you're walking in the Spirit, are you always begging God to make you stronger? No. You're resting. So from a resting position, what are you able to do? You're able to strengthen your brothers. That make sense?

Yeah. re-strengthens, all of our life is based on faith. Everything, more after our faith class, everything written from us is based on faith. Fight the good fight of faith. As I read most of the epistles, the commands or the prayers are about faith.

That's right. They have a bunch of things related, but the base root of all of it is faith. And I think he's just kind of restating, or this is the foundational thing. Your faith. That's what we're based on. Faith is the issue. So the big reason for the whole premise of this class is so that we would have the object of our faith. We would know what to believe. You know, most people I talk to say, well, if I believe hard enough, and I know God is God, and so I'll stick, that's as much as I know, and he's going to fix it or not fix it, or maybe I don't believe hard enough. The specificity of our position is really critical to our resting by faith.

What has he done what has already been accomplished. In this case, he's my advocate and I have the Holy Spirit within me who is an advocate. Are they working? Are they doing what they say they're going to do? And if my focus is on him and his work and what his work is today and what he's already accomplished, am I free from sin? from a positional standpoint? Yes. Absolutely. So which is true? Whether I feel like I'm free from sin or that I really am positionally free. Which is true? That I really am.

How do I enter into that? Answer? Faith. That's the only way. You can't feel your way into it, experience your way into it, do spiritual push-ups your way into it. It's real simple. The Lord tells you some things and we're just to trust Him, settle down and rest in the positions that He's already given us. And it isn't squint real hard, as hard as you can. You just rest.

But there's a growth process involved here. So, question six, is there going to be a constant need in our spiritual growth? Yeah, there is, even as a more fully learning to hate or reject self and to love the Lord Jesus. Spiritual growth is a two-edged sword. There's the hate the self and the love the Lord Jesus. Reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God. At rest in our position in the Lord Jesus, we depend upon the Holy Spirit to take us through all that's required for our growth in the purpose of God. Now, it's very interesting to me that God never lets believers slide on this revelation of self. He never lets you slide. There's an awareness that is gained as we grow spiritually about, you know, in me, that is in my flesh, not your flesh, my flesh, dwells no good thing. Right? I was hoping it was only fifty percent. Or maybe sixty. But to get to the realization that in my old man, everything that I am from Adam, not anything is good. Not anything.

It takes the Spirit of God a while to convince me that that's true. And how does He convince me that in my flesh dwells no good thing? He shows me. He shows me me. He lets me do really dumb stuff. You know? He allows My thought process, my mind that's full of sin and my tendencies and my desires and all of that from the flesh to come out.

So I see him and what happens when I see him from my position in Christ? It's more than just a dislike and it's not a psychological depression because I'm not that guy anymore. It seems so almost flighty to say that, but I am not that guy anymore. I am not who I was in Adam. I have no association with Adam from a positional standpoint at all. None. So we are going to need to be dependent on the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus step-by-step in our spiritual growth. As we grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, we're also growing in the knowledge of me.

And guess what? We don't like me. So in all that we go through in growth, what are the two most important things we will be taught to do? Okay, that's one of them. I would say that we're taught to abide. We're taught to abide. What's the other thing we're going to be taught? I just told you. You've got to reject yourself. You're an old man. We're going to be taught both of those things.

At the same time, we are to count upon His advocacy and rejoice in the privilege of our fellowship with the Father. You know, there's something about the human, I want to say sin nature, that we just want to hold on to who we are in Adam really hard, especially the good stuff. I've used this example before.

What was the name of the tree in the Garden of Eden that God said don't eat of? The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We're perfectly willing as Christians to reject the evil. How about the good? How about the good? Are you willing to reject your goodness Because the other tree in the garden is a tree of life. And so the issue is to get down out of that tree, go down in the garden someplace, find the tree of life and get up and add life.

There's no good and evil in that life, there's just holiness. You see that? We really think good and evil for a long time until we learn to reject self and to abide in Christ. And then we realize, well in Christ there's no such thing as good and evil. There's no comparison. It's either of him or not of him. It's either self or Christ. That's really what it is.

And all of ourselves, all of our sin natures have a lot of goodness to them, right? The old help the old lady across the street, well now it's the point one of those people is going to have to help me across the street. I gave money. I did, you know, Lord you've got to be happy with me because I did A, B, and C. My goodness. Yeah, I read that years ago. How do you deal with the old man? You don't. You ignore him. Louder. The Holy Spirit deals with him. have a tendency to gravitate towards the goodness of the old man and the good things in the earth.

I was also thinking about how easy it is to, oh, I wish I was more whatever, your inadequacies, hoping that they would not be as obvious as they are. You know what's so subtle about that mentality? It keeps you in self. The self is really deceptive. It will do anything to keep you focused on it.

The woe-me's is a self-focused exercise. The oh-I'm-so-wonderful is a self-focused exercise. I've got my rights and who are you to do that to me? I've got my rights. You know the great cartoon, the guy that's the object of the firing squad, he's sitting there and he looks at the guys with the guns and says, in the end, after all, it's all about me. That's the way the self is. To answer Donna's other question, the self will do anything but not do. Understand what I just said? It will do anything, but not do anything. As long as it's active, good, bad, somewhere in the middle, it's active.

And the Spirit of God is specifically in us to focus us on the Lord Jesus Christ and to apply the cross to the old man so that he won't do When Paul says in Romans chapter 7, I was alive once apart from the law, but sin came, in all manner of desire, the hallmark, the very source of the life of the old man is desire. He desires stuff. As long as he's desiring and we're paying attention to it, we're in the flesh. As we abide in the Lord Jesus Christ, it can do all the desiring it wants. It isn't part of who we are positionally.

You see that? I was thinking about, I don't know where it is, but when Paul says that everything that was to his advantage, He counted up. All lost. Yeah, it was lost. And I'm thinking this is kind of like that. It is. The sin nature. You know, we don't have all the things to chalk up. Maybe they were rich and powerful and whatever else. Sure. Belonged to a certain family and so on. But we think we have good and it's like, well, why isn't that good enough?

It's a loss, right at all. We all have an interpersonal resume in which in my life I have done one, two, I graduated, I was in the military, I did this, I rescued somebody from a burning building, I went on five mission trips. We all have this resume. It's all self. It's all self.

And as the Spirit of God works in us, what is He doing? He's trying to make the value of who the Lord Jesus is more important to us than I rescued five people out of a burning building. Aren't I somebody? I must admit to you, if somebody comes up to me and says, you were a Marine, weren't you? I say, yeah. There's a little self going on there. I'm glad I wasn't in the Air Force. You couldn't get in? Probably couldn't.

You know, stuff like that. We all have that sort of thing in our life that, you know, we worked hard and we accomplished something and we're proud about it. Who's proud about it? The old man. So it's hard for the spirit. You think about the job he has to do is to make Christ more valuable to you than you are to yourself. Really tough job. And all things give Christ the preeminence.

Yeah, yeah. And how do you learn that in me that is in my flesh dwells no good thing? If he doesn't show you, you don't know it. You are not going to see it. But you read and you say, well, that's what he's up to. Okay. Go for it. All the things that we go through, the two most important things that we are taught, I wrote down all that we go through to make us more fully reject self via the cross. The rejection of self isn't that I reject it. The rejection of self is based on the fact that it was dealt with on the cross of Christ. And the second thing that I'm taught is to abide in Christ via my position.

He's doing that. At the same time, we're to count more upon his advocacy and rejoice in the privilege of our fellowship with the Father. You realize that? The privileges that we have with the God of the universe? I'm sometimes overwhelmed by everything he's done and where he's taken us and what he wants us and what's coming in eternity.

And yet it's begun already. It's begun already. Is Christ's work of atonement ever repeated? No. Why not? Have you ever done something and you think, oh boy, how is the Lord ever going to forgive me about that? Or here's a better one. You've been a believer 20 years and this thought comes into your mind, way back before I was a Christian I did something really horrible. When has the Lord forgotten about that one? I haven't. Let's go back to the last part.

We talk about this, and I wonder, distinguishing between the old self and the new, and when I'm doing something in Christ, and when I'm doing something out of self, we talk about that. To me, it's a very difficult thing, but I don't know. We say these terms and we say this. It seems easy, or it seems, you know, we say it, but what does that really mean?

Between the old man and the new man, which one is in my brain now? Which one is controlling? And how, you know, is it, you know, evaluating motives, but then I'm looking at myself if I'm looking at motives. I guess the thing, and the more I just got out of the faith class again, is that I think it comes down to just the intimacy with him.

The more time you spend with him, it's like the object of your love. If that's the object of your love, that's going to be everything. You know how that person breathes, moves, everything. And I think that's, you know, the more time you spend with him, the more you're just enamored and that's your focus. And it's not a work, it's not an effort, it's not anything. It's just because that's the focus because you love him. And it goes back to just intimacy with him, you know, John 17.

I really think that's the basis of our faith, that's everything. You need to know him in order to trust him with all these things he's said. And I just, you know, I'm trying to, you know, live my own life. Boy, I really hear what you're saying. You take a mental inventory of how spiritual you are. And you're right. When you were talking, two examples.

How many of you have a dog? What are you? Nobody has a dog than me. I marvel at dogs. How they watch you. And how they know you. There's all these little signals. My dog can be dead asleep. And it's time to go for a walk. I don't have to say anything, but he somehow knows. Up and we're going.

Along the lines of paying attention to their master, they pay close attention and it's the little tiny things that trigger them. It's the same way with a husband and wife who love each other. There's an intensity with which you watch the other person and you know them and you engage them. Well, on a much higher, greater scale, think about what the Spirit of God is doing with us and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We're watching Him. He's revealing Him to us. We're paying really close attention to Him. We're in the Word of God, not because we have to, but we find out that, boy, that's where I get to watch Him. I can study him in there, see what he's about, you know? And so you get into that, and you know what? When you're doing that, who are you not thinking about?

Me! Me! Boy, what freedom is that? Okay? So that's why you'll hear encouragement about all the time, is that when you read your Bible, you are not in it to be a scholar, because the scholarship is about me. If I get a PhD and four chevrons and five degrees from a seminary, who's it about? Me!

But if I spend time in the Word of God for one purpose only, and that's to get to know Him, that's what He wants. That's why He put it together. That's why He gave us this book that's alive. That's how we study Him. So, like my dog, I can start to anticipate things that he likes and things that he doesn't like. I don't have to sin and fall in the sewer in order to figure things out. I know him now.

I use it, people laugh at this, but I know there are things that I am never going to do around Donna. Why? I'm going to make her unhappy. Not that I'm going to suffer from it, it's just going to make her unhappy and I don't want to do that. Because I love her, right?

It's the same way with the Lord Jesus. And here we have, it isn't up to me to carry this off. The Spirit of God has been put in us to accomplish this very thing. It's up to Him to do it. And the biggest hurdle and detriment we have is my old man, my sin nature, who demands attention. It's like a six month old baby crying, I gotta have attention. You have to pay attention to me. No I don't.

When a man gets to the point where he loves a woman and he wants to marry her, what does he do with all the other women in the world? They get moved out of the way. Don't they? When the Lord Jesus becomes the most valuable thing to you, everything else gets moved out of the way.

And it's not a hard decision. So, you're talking conditionally? Yeah, I am. Because positionally, Christ could never do anything to disappoint the Father, because they're one in the same life, right? Yeah, that's right. That would never ever be an issue for us either because of where we are.

I remember years and years ago on a Tuesday men's meeting out at Betty's and we got into this discussion about when we're all in heaven and we're in eternity we're going to be thankful for the Lord Jesus paying the price for our sins and all of that.

And I said no way. And the guy I was arguing with said, oh, we're going to be... I said, no way. Why not? We're not ever going to think about me and my sins. Ever. It's never going to be about me. Never. It's always going to be about Him there, and to the point where we think, oh, I'm going to take my eyes off of Him and think about playing golf. No, I'm never going to take my eyes off of Him because of who He is. He's going to totally capture each one of us. We will never even think about, have a self-thought or anything about ourselves, ever. Hallelujah. Yeah, hallelujah.

I think when we recognize what the Spirit of God is up to from the one standpoint of getting us to abide in Christ, and the biggest detriment we have is our old sin nature, our old man, so it's his job to keep the old man in the place of the cross and to reveal Christ to us. It's him.

Our job is to trust him, to do what he's already done positionally and to trust him to implement the position that's already been accomplished. I think I mentioned this a week or two ago. If you take a step back and look at the Old Testament and the Gospels, you find that in every sense in there, God did some things, but then he would go to man and say, now it's time for you to do your part. And man never could do it because of the sin nature.

So he determined that here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take care of the whole thing. It's going to totally be done. It's all going to be in place, and then I'm going to go to man and say, OK, I did it all, all you've got to do is believe. Your part is faith. You don't have to accomplish anything. I did it all. I'm not depending on you to pull this off at all. I did it all.

I want you just to believe me. And if you do believe me, you're going to get it all. Isn't that cool? Pretty good plan. OK, so Christ's work of atonement won't ever be repeated because, and their sins and offenses I will remember no longer. But where those have been forgiven, no further offering is required. Hebrews 10, 17 and 18.

There's so much that we depend on factually of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, seeing that he ever lives to make intercession for us. You know, like it or not, we're dependent. We are totally dependent on him. Whether we like it, whether we know it, whether we care about it or not, we are dependent. And one of the things, ever think about this, what's the first commandment? No, no, no. What's the first commandment? I am the Lord thy God and I shall not have false gods before me. Who's the false god? Me. So I'm screwed with the first commandment because he says I won't have you before me. my old man, my Adam. And why does he put it that way? Because that's what my old man wants to do.

It wants to be before God. What do you think Satan's all about? He's looking at what God's doing and he says, I want to do what he's doing, only I want to be in charge. See, Satan never had an original thought, ever. He's only imitating what God has done and does.

See that? And his whole deal is in the garden. He said, I'm going to put my throne above his. Your old man wants to put your throne above his. And so God says, OK, I'm going to give you the law. And the first law is, oh yeah, the thing you are and want to do, you can't do it. It's against the law. And if you do it, you die. Pretty smart of God to do it that way, right?

OK, read Hebrews 10. Hebrews 10 19-22 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, Let us draw near, with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Okay, so the question is, what do these verses mean in a practical sense? What's the first thing you can do here?

He says, I want you to enter in, but he sets it up. He says, since, love that word, since, means done, brethren you have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus. Where is that place? What is that place? The very presence of God. The very presence of God. And the old temple set it up, outer court, inner court, holy of holies, right? How many human beings got to go into that holy place? one guy once a year, and how'd he get in there? What was the ticket in? Blood. Had to have blood to go in.

So now he says, we want you, from a confidence standpoint, confident, how do you get the confidence? One, you know, you have the knowledge about what's been done. Two is, you rest by faith. So he says, now that we've got that in place, and your confidence level is up to where, let's move. So here's where we're going. By the blood of Christ, I got the ticket, by a new and living way, or a new and freshly slain way. And the freshly slain means this. In the Jewish economy, if I took a lamb down to the temple and had it slain for my sins, how long a time after that happened and I walked out of the temple did I need to go get another lamb and get down there?

It's like growing up a Catholic and going to confession on Saturday and trying to make it to Mass on Sunday. There's a lot of Sundays I couldn't make it. You think, yeah, I could be holy for 12 hours. Can't do it. So the point is, is that if you, under the Old Testament's Jewish sacrificial system, you had to constantly be covering your sins. Because you were sinning a lot. Even the most holy men were sinning a lot. And so, I've said this often, if I were a Jew in 200 B.C., I wanted to be a sheep rancher. that would take that many. But now look at what he says here. He says that you can enter into the Holy of Holies by a new, and mine says living way, but a freshly slain way. That means that the value of the sacrifice of Christ never goes away.

It's like a slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now, slain now What did the veil do in the Old Testament in the temple?

It's a separator. And if you ever read about the veil, you know, it's thick and it's heavy and you can't pull it apart. Horses and mules couldn't pull it apart. But somehow it was split when Christ died. Not only to open the way for us in, but to allow God to come out. So now we can go in. through the veil. Why is the veil and the flesh associated with each other? Because this flesh is the thing that separates us from God. It's been taken care of so you can go in. And that is his flesh and since we have a great high priest over the house of God.

What's a high priest job? What's a priest job? Offer sacrifice. Who does he represent? Who does the priest represent? The people. Who does the prophet represent? God to the people. So we've got a great high priest over the house of God that represents us. From what position? From outside the temple? From in the outer court? From in the Holy of Holies?

Okay, so he's in there. He's a great high priest. He represents all believers before the throne of God. There's that advocacy again. And here's the cool part. Let us draw near. Let us draw near. What does that mean? Near to what? To Him. A guy said to me one time, run down, jump in the Lord's lap, and don't ever get out. Draw near, get close. And you know what?

There's nothing left now between God and me. Nothing. It's all been handled by Christ. Everything is out of the way. So no matter what's going on in your mind, if you have a doubt in your mind, you're not walking by faith. And what you learn about positional truth is that there isn't anything left between God and me.

So go ahead. Intimacy. Here comes the intimacy part. And you draw near with a sincere heart. That means that your heart's clean, your conscience is clear, and I don't like the word assurance of faith. The word assurance is not in the Greek. It means the fullness of faith. Not the assurance of faith, it's the fullness of faith. It's your faith that causes you to get in there and go. It isn't that the faith assures you, it's that you have the faith to go. The fullness of faith.

Having your heart sprinkled with clean from an evil conscience. We've been talking about conscience now for a couple of weeks. What in some cases can be just a detriment to us in terms of our approaching God. But the blood of Christ cleanses our conscience so that there's no barrier. There's nothing left to keep us from going, except me.

My doubt, my fears, my anxiety, my whatever it is, anything the old man can come up with to keep me from going. you know, anything, if you think about it, or I'm not holy enough. I remember one time I was working down on a mission on Larimer Street and we were about to get going and some guy, I was standing out in front of the place, and a guy comes down the street and he stops and I start talking to him and he said, well I grew in there but I'm just not good enough. And I was a young Christian, I didn't know how to deal with him. Well my buddy was standing there and he said, you arrogant guy, who are you to say from the work of Christ that you are not good enough. And you know what? You're not. But Christ has paved the way for you. And the guy walked away.

Our old man is so powerful in times like that. Anything to keep us from Christ. No matter what, oh, I'm not well enough, I'm not mentally healthy enough, I'm not holy enough. Whatever it is, we're to go in because the entrance isn't dependent on us, it's dependent on Christ and His work. If you've got the ticket, you can go in the blood of Christ. So I can approach my Father where He is any time. any time. Christ's death has permanently opened the way to Him. But it's like Courtney says, it's only done by faith in the facts of the Word.

So let's get up and go. I've questioned myself, why am I not going in there? There's nothing to keep me from going in there. I should go. in part of the new creation? The confidence is based on the positional truth and the fact that I believe it and the Spirit of God has persuaded me so I have confidence to go. It's like you've been in places where they've got a barrier and they don't want you to go on the other side. There was no greater barrier than the veil in the temple. Because the Shekinah Glory was in there. And the rule was, if you go in there and you're not authorized to be in there, you screw up in there, guess what happens to you? It's a dangerous place to go. Dangerous for the old man. Perfectly fine for us.

So if a believer doesn't have the confidence, then he just doesn't know his position. He's probably ignorant. That's true. And if he's if he's not, if he's gotten the information, then he probably doesn't believe it. That's why you don't. He doesn't have the confidence to say I have a friend. I used to play in a blues band. And he's been having some health issues and losing his memory.

And he was saying, on the phone call, he said, I can kind of tell that you're the kind of person who doesn't worry about dying. And I said, not in the least. I'm not at all afraid to die. And he said, my wife, I know his wife's a Buddhist, and he's a Buddhist too, but he's going, I know that isn't really really what we should be searching after.

But he said, what was really interesting is, I think God is working on him to get him to figure it out. But the thing that was interesting is he said, the only problem I have with Christianity is God is so loving he would never kill his own son. He would never kill his son. He's not an evil human God.

And that's it. The cross is everything. Everything about Christianity is based on what Jesus did on that cross. If you understand the cross, you'll understand. Cool. There's a challenge. It just blew my mind that the cross is insane. Well, the thing that he needs to understand is that the Lord Jesus was not forced into the cross.

He willingly went because he knew what it meant. And he knew the consequences or the results on the other side. So it isn't that the Father had him around the scruff of the neck and threw him up on the cross. He willingly went. He told Pontius Pilate, you're not taking your life from me. I'm freely given it.

But isn't what he's talking about like the offense of the cross? Oh, the cross is offensive to the old man. Why is it offensive to the old man? Because the old man, without having it explained to him, knows that the cross represents death to it. The smell is there. It knows.

Would you say that reckoning and faith are the same? No, they're not. Reckoning, I would say, is a proven faith. Let me put it this way, I'm given facts in the word of God that I was crucified with Christ. So I believe it. I trust the Lord because he's told me. But then over time, the Spirit of God persuades me that that is true.

And therefore I can reckon. Reckoning, the way it's explained, is an accounting term. If I said there are nine pages here, and I say, there are nine pages here, and you say, okay, I trust you. But if I hand you the thing and you go one, two, three, at the end you can say, I reckon there are nine pages here. That's the difference. The persuasion is the reckoning. Reckon can become a word of legalism where I'm reckoning, reckoning, reckoning. I reckon because I'm persuaded it's true.

Romans 6.11 says, therefore, based on all the information gone before, reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin and alive unto God. believe the first 10 verses of chapter 6 and the last 10 verses of 5. So I understand about two men identification on the cross that my old man was crucified.

But then I get to Galatians 2.20 and look at the difference.

Romans 6.6 says, knowing this, that my old man was crucified with him. Okay, now I know it and I'm believing it.

But Galatians 2.20 says, I've been crucified with Christ.

There's a guy who's reckoning. You see that? Did I explain that clear enough? Reckoning is a word that, you know, I've been down the road with it and I know it's silly. on each of the things, for instance, like the things above, think on things above. Our position, yeah. Yeah, and each of those items that's there, we can make a big huge list and we reckon on them one by one and after a while we quit reckoning, we just walk in the faith. No, it's the other way around.

I think we learn what Colossians 3 says, since you be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. Well, what are those things? So you learn those things through study of the Word. And as you learn them, you believe them. But as the Spirit of God persuades you they're true, you reckon them to be so.

You say, oh yeah, I don't have a problem with that. I don't have to just take God at His word. He's proven to me or shown me that it's so. And my reckoning didn't make it so, it already is so. But now I'm persuaded. At first, if I enter by faith into a positional truth, I may be reckoning on it or not, I'm just taking God at His word. And He doesn't have to show me anything. I'm just taking Him at His word. But He will show me. And then the reckoning is the result of it.

I guess I feel sometimes like I'm reckoning again because something is being tested. Sure. That particular thing, do I really believe it? And I did, but do I now? Yeah, I do believe it. Do I have to re-reckon sometimes? Sometimes you do. I mean, if the assault of the sin nature comes at you, how do you deal with it? You reckon yourself dead to it and alive unto God. Are you re-reckoning?

Yeah. You're saying, wait a minute. Here it comes. I didn't say come on ahead. It just shows up. My sin nature is active. Wait a minute. I'm reckoning I'm dead to you and alive to God. That's how you deal with sin. Second buzzer go off? Did you want to say something?

I don't know the implications of using the word reality versus false. Not a bad idea. Reckoning is a reality from a positional standpoint. Reckoning is really a conditional thing, maybe. Does that make sense? No, it isn't, because grace and truth, reality, came by Jesus Christ. So that would be a position. For me to reckon on it, though. That's a resting in what is real. Yeah, that's right.

I believe it. But there are things that I believe, like I believe that I'm going to continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, and I believe that coming down the road in the future that certain things are going to be. But then there comes a time where I know that's so. I don't have to be persuaded about it anymore. I reckon it's so.

Could you say that reckoning is application of the fact? I would say rather than application, I would say it's maybe more of an appropriating term. Faith is how you appropriate the truths to yourself. Let me make it simple. Are you convinced you're saved? You reckon it's so? So it's way more than just believing it. You just know it. You're persuaded. I can't reckon that you're saved. You know why? Because he didn't persuade me about you. He's only persuaded me about me.

So I reckon I'm saved. You reckon you're saved. I think you probably are. But that's not my business. I'm persuaded. So are you. Well, this reckoning, this persuasion, all this positional truth that we're studying and entering into the Holy of Holies, all of that is to become part of what we reckon on. Because we're persuaded it's so. Now when you're going home today and you're speeding and the cop stops you, you say, I'm reckoning myself dead to the world. No ticket. Let's close.

Father, how we love you. We thank you for your son and we thank you for you and what you've done to place us in Christ and that you are so careful to teach us what our position in him before you is. And so we trust you with their growth and with our continued abiding and learning in grace, Father. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.