Which Side of the Cross - Lesson 5

Okay, we're in lesson six. I was hoping to have lesson seven done for this morning, but I got way late last night. Just to sort of tell you where we are, we're trying to move from this side of the cross, which is the lost side, to the safe side. and point out the differences, and that's why the question is, which side of the cross do I live on?

So with Romans 6, we're right here. In Romans 6, 1-10, the defecation truths are God's work through the cross of Christ to disconnect us from all of our association and unity with Adam and reconnect us with the resurrected glorified Lord Jesus. Romans chapter 6 verses 1-10 are the mechanics of how he did it. This is exactly how he did it. So that's what we'll be talking about today.

The first question is, who controls the sin nature in the believer? Is it really that hard a question? Phil says the believer. What do you say? No, because I was thinking the sin nature seems to be pretty... It doesn't need anybody to control it, right? Who controls? Now, listen to the question. Who controls the sin nature in the believer?

Not non-believer, but in the believer. Don says the Holy Spirit. Anybody else? Should we have a vote? All those who think it's the believer's control, raise your hand. Come on Phil, get your hand up. All those who think it might be the Holy Spirit, raise your hand. Boy, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, we have 10 chickens in this class. They won't raise their hand.

It's God's responsibility to control the sin nature in the believer. I know sometimes that's a real revelation. So on what scripture then would you base this truth? It's Romans chapter 6. That's where we're going to find out that it's God who controls the sin nature in the believer.

Isn't that cool? I mean it's a big revelation when you first are confronted with it because you think you've been fighting so hard with sin that you don't want to release control of that battle to somebody else. Right? Okay. Question two. Do you have the freedom as believers to plead with God The power of a tendency to sin over which there is no control. In other words, can I go to God and say, Oh Lord, please give me control over my tendency to sin. Or I have this sin that keeps dogging me and I really need your help to overcome it. Is that a proper prayer to the Lord?

No, the answer is no, but I'm not sure why. No, the answer is no why. I didn't tell you what the answer was. You just think it's no. In other words, can I go to God and say, you know, I have this terrible temper, and every time the triggering mechanism happens, I'm out of control.

And I sometimes do pretty good with it, but it seems to, you know, break out. So you've got to really help me deal with this. Is that right? Is that an appropriate prayer? I hope so. I've got a hope so and I've got a no. I've got a no over here. I like that. No, it's not. It's not appropriate. Listen to this. You're always going to have a tendency, right? Your sin nature is never going to stop. It's never going to go away because it's floating around inside of you.

The second thing is, how long does it take a believer to realize the simple fact that it's more than I can control? It's more than I can control. And I dare say that growing believers really are convinced early on that either they can handle it or God is going to give them the grace to handle it.

As a matter of fact, if you were raised in a reformed environment, a covenant environment, their doctrine says that you have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit to keep you from sinning and he will enable you to keep the law so you won't sin. Well we just found out two weeks ago that what does the law do? The law came in alongside the sin nature of sin. What did it cause the sin nature to do?

Explode. Well there goes that theory. So now I've got this exploding sin nature that I've discovered I can't control. That is a huge discovery in a believer's life. I think it's huge. When they finally come to the realization, I can't control this thing. I can't control me. Even if I'm a really good guy and a swell dancer inside, that sucker is raging and I can't keep a lid on him. Can you know that without the Holy Spirit? I don't think you can.

One of the aspects of spiritual growth is the frustration that you're going to experience by going through that experience. just so you learn that one lesson. Wait a minute, this thing, I can't control it. That's Roman 7? Well, Roman 7 is someone who recognizes and understands Roman 6, but then goes back to the law to try to keep it under. Okay? So, two big things so far.

It's God's responsibility to control the sin nature in the believer and I'm not supposed to go to God and ask him to give me the power to do it. Why not? Why wouldn't I go ask God, hey Lord, I need your help so I won't sin any longer. What's he going to say? How shall we who died to these sins you're talking about still live? Perfect. You see, it's really sort of simple right there. How shall I who died to sin be living in it any longer?

So what is God saying to us? You're asking me to do something that I've already done. You know? Where I see it a lot is in some of the hymns we sing, where we're begging God to do something and I look at them and I think, well He already did that, why are we asking Him? You know? It's like you gave me a dollar and I say, can you give me a dollar? And you say, I already gave you the dollar. It's pretty simple that way. So, a couple of things. I've got some steps here.

It would not be becoming of the child of God to live any longer in sin. It's not part of who we are. Why is it not necessary to live any longer or go on bearing fruit unto sin? Why? So I haven't answered it. We just answered it. It's like we have people showing up. But concentrate. That's what I say to the kids. Eyes on me.

Why is it not necessary to live any longer or go on bearing fruit unto sin? Why isn't it necessary? It's a real simple answer. What is it? Because we died. Nobody in the Emerson household expects Beth to do anything anymore. Why? She's out of here. She's home. Her body might be around there, but we don't expect her to get up and say, hey, how's it going? You know what I'm saying? So it's just as critical to understand that the logic is pretty simple.

I'm dead to sin, so why should I continue in it? So God has provided, I'm sorry, can we plead the power of a tendency to sin over which there is no control? What do you think? I'm back to pretty much the same question. Can I plead to God for power over sin which I have no control? No, I can't. Why not? I've got the tendency. It's more than I can control.

So either he's going to give me the power to control this in nature, or he's going to do it. Which is it? He's going to do it. So God has provided the possibility of deliverance from its power. How did he do it? He judged the old nature. He put it on the cross. He gave us the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. So what's the Holy Spirit's job when it comes to this signature?

We've got one of two thought processes here. Either He's going to help me do it, or He's going to do it. Which is it? He's going to do it. Every time that tendency shows up, which is most of the time, His job and His power is to apply the cross to that. It's his job. You see that?

And that puts us as believers in a really unique position. The position is that we're totally dependent on God alone for deliverance. Sorry to say, you guys are really hoping that the Constitution or something will give you the power for deliverance. You don't got it. Sorry. We're dependent totally on deliverance, on the Holy Spirit to be delivered.

Romans 7.23, Paul says, Who shall deliver me? Now, back to my original premise.

How many days, weeks, months, years does it take the Spirit of God just to teach that much to a believer? How long do you think it takes? Yeah, it takes your lifetime. And even when you know it and you learn it, there's still the fallback. There's still almost an instinctive response to go do it yourself. And every time you do, you get hammered. You lose. Every time. We were driving through Black Hawk last night and I thought, gee, there's cars and cars and cars of people who are losers. That's what I thought.

I think that you often hear it in prayer, and you hear it in your own prayer. But, you know, Lord, help me do this. Help me get through this scenario or whatever the situation is. So then maybe you grow a little bit and you recognize that's not necessarily the case, so then you start to pray, Lord, help me to trust you. There you go. So where does that... I know that my kids, I often hear them thinking along those lines, and we've talked a little bit about it, but I'd be interested to know how you feel about, or what does the scripture say about asking for faith? Oh, that's a good question.

So let's talk about the elements of faith. Faith, number one, has to have an object, right? Which means that the object must be clearly known and understood, just like Romans 6 must be clearly known and understood in order for me to put my trust in it.

Now when we did the faith class, remember in the faith class we talked about the four different kinds of faith? Well, some of you were in that class. There's biblical faith, there's the essence of faith, There are parts of scripture that have the definite article in front of the word faith, the faith, which means some specific aspect of the doctrine or maybe the whole doctrine itself. I think how faith works. The last one is personal faith and that is what you are talking about, personal faith. And when we started that class, I remember asking this class, I said, give me your definition of the essence of faith. Everybody in the classroom gave me a definition of personal faith. The essence of faith has nothing to do with you personally.

It's Hebrews 11.1. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and it's the evidence of the proof of things not seen. What are you in that? It's talking about what faith is.

The responsibility for me as a teacher and as a parent is to inform and teach children, well, what is it that we're supposed to believe? Get that essence in place and then work off of there. I don't think you pray for faith because I think God has already done it.

He, a couple of things, were to grow in the knowledge and the grace of the Lord Jesus. So here I am growing, what am I doing? I'm in the knowledge, I'm learning. I'm learning in the word of God who the Lord Jesus is and what he did and who I am now in him. About the cross, about all of the things that we teach. And I'm learning at the same time that this whole entire thing that I'm learning is in the umbrella of grace. That's the next part of this class. What is grace? How does it work?

Also, I learned that it is God who causes me both to will and to do of His good pleasure. If you read The Hungry Heart this morning, it was really cool about that, about who does what. Do I respond to God based on I have to do it or because of the work of the Spirit in me? So, I think with children, teaching them the truth is the first thing. And rather than, you know, just, well, God has said it, is it so? And like that thing I read a few weeks ago about Abraham, you know, that he didn't understand a whole lot about God, but his deal was, is that, well, God said it, so I'm going with it. And I think the simplicity of that is really important. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I think so.

I think one other aspect of it is sometimes we think our faith grows by appealing to the Lord to strengthen our faith. And I think faith is strengthened through the Word. And so it's almost like when we say, Lord, help me to trust you with X. or why, or whatever the situation is, and he's saying, I've given you everything you need to know. Your responsibility is to surround yourself in the word with who I am and what I've done, and that faith is strengthened through my word.

It's already there. That strength is already available to you. It's not something I'm going to give to you in a moment and empower you to all of a sudden have faith in the circumstance. everything needed to believe and every bit of knowledge and the object of all of our faith in every scenario is already in the scripture and yet we often times are looking for some kind of supernatural power to believe something. One of the reasons that I'm such a fan of Miles Stanford is because if you look at the title of the book he's most famous for the green letters, the subtitle is The Principles of Spiritual Growth.

What's a principle? It's how a thing operates or functions. So his book is all about how does this Christian life function? How do you grow spiritually? You know what he says the number one thing is? Need. So here you come, you learn some stuff. What does God, what does the Spirit of God, by the way, who indwells you do? He creates a circumstance That faith that what you've learned is tested. For what purpose?

So that God can say to you, I told you you couldn't do it. I'll shame on you. No. It's to prove to you and me that what he's told us is true. So I don't have to say, I need more faith. If I recognize that the resistance I get in my life from any kind of circumstance, doesn't matter, Because it's suited to me, it's suited to you personally, because the Spirit of God is personally interested in each one of us. My spiritual growth is dependent on Him, and He's really good at it. Really good at it.

He will never test me about you. Or He won't test you about me. But what my circumstances are, are uniquely set up for me for what purpose? So I would learn to live by faith alone. That I would trust him in every single circumstance and everything that he tells me. I'll just rest. Because that's what faith is, it's rest. Rest in him. And faith goes from objective fact to love and affection with a person.

I trust what Donna tells me because I've known her for a long time and I love her and she can say anything she wants to me. I'd buy it all. She could fool me really easily. But the Lord Jesus, as far as I can tell, God hasn't lied to me yet. That's what I tell Donna. She'll say something and I'll say, when's the last time I lied to you?

I just bring that up because I would imagine that each of us have probably dealt with that, not just with kids but with ourselves. Always looking in prayer to get an increase of faith. It's like, I just need a bigger dose this week. And the verse, you know, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the heart. And so it's like there is a strengthening of faith designed in time in the Word. And it can be accompanied by prayer, but prayer in and of itself is not... God didn't design prayer to increase our faith in the moment of testing.

The Word's job. And so I've just started to dial my own thinking in on that and thought there might be others that... Anybody else want to talk about it? It's a great subject right here because I think a lot of believers don't have the kind of clarity about this that they should because we're relying on some tradition we learned in a religion that we grew up with or some experience we've had rather than taking God at His word.

Notice how a believer is equipped with a position in Christ. He also has the Spirit of God resident within him all the time. Two o'clock in the morning, three in the afternoon, eight, he's there all the time. And he has a job to do, and he's really good at doing it.

We sometimes think that if the tendency to sin is there, somehow the Holy Spirit had to take a break. No, that's all part of it. And we find ourselves in circumstances, how is God ever going to teach an American that he needs to be dependent? Because we're taught from, we've got a constitution and we're Americans, nobody messes with us.

I get to decide. Oh yeah, I've got the power to carry out my decisions. Really? Let me see you fly. So, that kind of a circumstance, the Lord teaches us dependency. You know what the great thing about dependency is? That's when I'm most free, I'm most at rest, and I'm most in a position not to sin. when I'm most dependent. Kind of cool, isn't it?

That's one of the things I've noticed with like the disciples and like the Apostle Paul. There was nobody more dependent than Apostle Paul and at the same time there wasn't anybody tougher than that guy. The stuff that guy went through for the Lord, in total dependence, you know. Anybody else want to comment on that? Okay. Kind of quiet.

So, the point that we're trying to make here, we believers are dependent upon God alone for deliverance by His Spirit. So, thus the necessity to sin is broken. The necessity. Necessity is a really interesting word because there are times where if you're being tested about your ability to control sin, you're going to discover, I can't stop this. I'm ashamed, I'm disappointed, I'm angry, I'm whatever, but I can't stop. I can't stop. Or on the other side, I can't do what I want to do. I can't be nice to that person. I don't care. I just can't do it because it just hurts me.

So we believers, we're totally free now to live on a whole different plane of existence. We are free to live the resurrected life of Christ. We are free to understand we're new creations and the principles of the new creation are totally different. The principles of grace are totally different than any and everything that we've learned in the old system in the world.

And why do you think that that the word of God is very specific about, I have been crucified to the world, I have been crucified to the influence of Satan, I have been crucified to sin, my sin nature and the law. Those are the biggies of the old nature, the old world. So God says, look I am not improving anything, I took you out of there totally.

So the argument here is based upon the believer's vital union by which he organically was united to Christ through the baptism into the body of Christ. We, by being placed by the Holy Spirit into Christ, had to go through a spiritual process and the spiritual process was the cross of Christ. What's the word baptism mean? We're still working on it. We're working through Romans chapter 6. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, like that. So it says that we were baptized into Christ's death, right? What's the word baptized mean?

Placed into? Say that again? Placed into? Yeah, add one more word to that. Permanently. Never to be taken out. We've been placed into. What do we get placed into? Trick question. What did we get placed into? He's not a what, he's a who. We got placed into Christ. So at the timeline, if you look at the timeline of Christ's life. So he's born. He starts his ministry right here. He does three and a half years. Crucified. buried, resurrected, crucified. Where do we go in? Where do we go in? Where do we go into Christ? Look at verse 3 in chapter 6.

What does it say? Huh? His death. That's right. We go in at the point that he's crucified. We don't go in when he's born. We're not in there during his ministry. We get united to him when he dies. And death means separation. Why is that so important? We've been placed into Christ at the very point in which he died. Why is that so important? We died with it.

That's right. That's right. If you don't die with them, our existence in the world is we're going to live until we die. Right? We're going to really live until we die. What's the spiritual timeline? I die first, then I live. See? It's a little different, isn't it? And once you die first and live, you're never going to die again.

So, baptism is not one of those things that is... the function of baptism is a demonstration of what already happened. Go down in the water, you die. You come up to the newness of life. It doesn't add anything to what already has happened. But baptism really is a representation of identification with Christ. That's really what it is. You know, if you come out of Catholicism like I did, baptism is a washing away of what they call original sin. You know, they view the believer with a soul like a big globe that's got a cloud on it called original sin, and if you are water baptized, it cleans up the globe, washes it clean, but then through your life you keep mudding it up again. when in fact what baptism really is, is being placed into Christ at his death, and you're totally separated from all that's not of God. Because that's what happened to Christ. See what happens, once this happens to a human being, his history changes. Do you see that?

Because Adam, we've talked about that, Adam had a history, when did his history start? When God formed him? Yeah, when he was made. And so my history goes back to him. But if God disconnects me from him and crucifies me in Christ, I got a new history. How far back does my new history go?

Christ's death? No, farther than that. Oh, so it's the really foundational world? Foundation, even before. It says that God knew me in Christ before the foundations of eternity. How is that possible? I've got to be in Christ for that to be possible. Does that make sense? Even before that. I've already answered question four, but I've got more to add. At what point in the history of Christ does a believer become identified with Christ?

And it's his death. I'll read a couple of things to you. Unto his death we were baptized. Neither must we confuse water baptism. We've talked about that. Water baptism. Okay, I don't need to talk about that. So, how do I say this? In discussions with believers, maybe they're young believers, I don't think it's beyond the scope of their understanding, as J.D. and I are finding out, these kids downstairs, it's amazing what they can understand about this. People say, oh, you're in the identification church, you really spiritually understand stuff. At what chapter of the first book of Christianity is identification or baptism in Christ's death? Where is it? It's in the sixth chapter of the first book. You think it's basic? It's basic. Every believer should know this. This is basic stuff.

Yet, if I'm the opposition to Christianity, I don't want anybody to know about this. I'm going to give you all kinds of religious song and dance and really cool feelings as long as I can keep you away from that cross. Because the cross will free you. If you don't know about it, you're not going to be free.

It goes back to where our faith is. So, the issue being that I need to know as a believer that I really did, I really was included, placed into Christ at the point in which He died. And from there, there's all kinds of ramifications. The most important one is, did I really die?

Did I? How did I feel? Do you remember? What was that like? Do you remember when that happened? Do you have an experience about being up on that cross and dying? No, you have nothing. What do you have? You have God's Word that that happened to you and me. Isn't that all we have? Now, think about this. So you get this word, back to what J.D. was talking about, you find out that I was crucified with Christ, right? And you would think, what am I going to do with that information? I think I better believe it. So I believe it.

The very next thing that's going to happen, I think, is the Lord is going to allow circumstances to come against, to push back now on that. to say, did I really die? If I really died, why is all of this happening? What is he doing? What is he doing? He's proving to us, each one of us individually, that he means it when he says it. And it will stand the test. I really was crucified. I really am crucified. Only because he told me and I believed him. But now he's going to work it in. Let me ask you this. Show of hands.

How many of you are absolutely certain that you're saved? How many of you are absolutely certain that you were crucified with Christ? Pretty good. You know what's interesting about that? You weren't certain about your salvation six months after you were saved because you were getting a lot of resistance, right? and the Lord had to settle you down and the Holy Spirit had to persuade you about that. Now, how many of you are convinced that the person sitting to your right is saved? You are absolutely convinced. You would bet your life, you would bet your whole existence that the person sitting to your right is saved.

The Holy Spirit has persuaded you about her. No, He hasn't done that. He's persuaded you about you. Now, you're pretty sure, but it's not up to me to be sure. It's up to the Holy Spirit to persuade you. How many of you think the person to your left has been crucified with Christ? It's a good thing she's sitting on your end, right? No, I was just thinking the guy in the White House. The guy in the White House. He may not be reading it. So, quick thought.

You know, when we share the Gospel, and the Gospel was shared with last week, have a lot of emphasis, and it's a good emphasis on Christ's death. Sure. But for this to be a basic truth, I think most of us in this room would recognize that we didn't learn about our death with Christ at the same point in time where we learned about Christ's death on our behalf. Maybe. I mean, yeah, maybe not. Show of hands? No. But, yeah, it takes, and for whatever reason, in the formats that we present the gospel, today, as basic of a truth as that is, often times it's not introduced until much later and it's almost like, I started reading through Romans and now I'm really confused.

But that could be years and years later that you learn about your own death. It very well could be. And I just think that maybe a reminder to ourselves is that we should introduce that earlier. It's not part of the Gospel message, but it's part of that spiritual growth that comes as a result of it. That's right. And with our kids, you know, same type of thing. They've got to start understanding, not only Christ died for me, but I died with Him. Because that's going to take years to get convinced of, right?

Well, it's interesting, and I don't know if I'm unique, I was saved about six weeks. And the guy that led me to Christ, I was down in his office one day, he said, let me ask you something, get out your Bible. I said, well, can I borrow yours? He said, I want you to read the first six verses or seven verses of Romans chapter six and tell me what you think about them. I'm like a believer a few weeks. So I read that my old man was crucified with him, that sin wouldn't have dominion over him. He said, what does that mean? And I said, it looks like I might have died. He said, yeah, you did. Well, that started it. I said, did I really?

I think with kids or with any believer, if you're involved in their life, you'll find it. Let's say God privileges you to lead someone to Christ. That's not the end of it. That's just the beginning of your relationship with Him. So you walk with Him. There's going to come a time pretty soon when this issue of not being able to control sin, because you know how young believers are. They're so excited. Every time they ask God something, he does it for them. He confirms them. But then there comes this day when a child will say, you know, Dad, I can't do this. You know, I can't do this. That's when you start talking about death. You say, well, do you think God did something about you can't do this?

Let's go take a look. Well, it's interesting. Baptism is where you learn, if you go through You know, you become a believer and you decide you are going to get baptized. That's where that truth is oftentimes introduced. Sure is. That could be years after salvation. Could be. Absolutely could be. But it's interesting that the Lord uses baptism to teach that truth.

I mean, that's it. Yeah. Yeah, I noticed. As a matter of fact, the other day I was going through my photos on my phone and I've got all of this stuff and your kids were baptized and yours were and I'm thinking this is so cool. Here are these kids and they have at least a modicum of understanding that what Christ did on the cross not only for them but to them was way more than just save them. What a head start they have. Wow. The other thing I may not have told you but... Wando is such a straight-edged man. Who died? My old man died. I died. This one I don't quite understand.

Because I'm a new creature also in Christ. Well you can't be alive in a new creature. Alive in the old and alive in the new at the same time. What I was meaning is my flesh and my old man died. I mean I died. No it didn't. Your sin nature is alive and well. inside of you rocking and rolling right now.

So death, that's why understanding what the word death means is really important. What does the word death mean? It means to be separated, separation. So I can be separated from something and it's still cranking, but because of my separation from it, I don't have to respond to it anymore.

So when he says, how shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? The point is, how shall we who live in Denver live anymore in Brooklyn? I'm not in Brooklyn. I'm in Denver. Does Brooklyn still exist? Sure it does. I know people that are living there. But I'm not living there. Is Brooklyn still doing its thing? Sure. But I don't live there anymore. I live in Denver. So I have to understand that I'm the one that got separated. My old man didn't die, because if he did, then what's the source of my sin? It died in the sense that you're positionally separated. That's right. That's exactly right. The word separated is important. Because my old man is my old man. Hugely important. Think about that.

If that's the case, when the Spirit of God is going to test your faith about that, That's where the test is going to come. Who died here? My example of that is that if I did die, how come when the music starts my feet are moving? Why are they responding? If I'm dead to it, do I have to go back and look at what it says and say, well, do I trust God or do I trust my feet? I'm sure I heard that before I came to this church.

You may not have. Well, maybe I heard it, but sometimes you hear things and it doesn't really... You weren't listening. Well, you might be listening, but you don't understand. I might put it another way. You were listening, but you didn't hear it. Yeah, I don't understand, but it was... And so I don't know. I mean, I'm still working on that we're in this condition and we're in the position. Right.

And I don't... if that means I'm not saved? No, no. We're not talking about salvation here. None of this would be the experience or the understanding of a non-believer. None of it would be an experience or an understanding because they wouldn't have the capacity to understand what this is all about. And that's what J.D. was talking about salvation or presenting the gospel. The gospel is real simple. that Christ died on the cross for the sins of the world according to scripture.

He was buried and resurrected and was seen by many. Well, what does that tell me? He died for me. And that's all I need to be saved. Well, that's not all that happened. And as I grow spiritually, I begin to find out that, oh, it's really wonderful to be persuaded and to rest in the fact that my sins and my guilt are gone. I'm never going to have to face them.

But then there comes this other question, well how about that sucker that produces those sins? Did God do anything about him? That's what this is about. Because God has already freed us from the penalty of sin, he's freeing us now in our existence, floating around on the earth from the power of sin. This is how he did it. And when Beth is now home with the Lord, she's free from the very presence of sin.

It seems like, like Russ was saying, it seems like there's such a tendency in us, though, to think that, you know, here's my old synodamic nature over here, here's my new life in Christ, and here I am, in the middle, picking, you know, one way or the other. What do you think? Do you agree with what she's saying? How many of you understand what Donna's saying?

Yeah, we really do look that way. We think that I'm on the yellow line and I can either go left or right. But here I'm safe. No, you're not. Yeah, I get to choose which side I'm going to live on. The point is, is that from a positional factual point, I was over here. I'm now over here.

And the fact that I'm totally controlled. at all times, either by the sin nature or by the light. Huge, huge. So that's when we started out the class, how long does it take the Holy Spirit to teach us about dependency, about the sin nature as a controlling factor, that I'm a slave to sin and now I'm a slave to righteousness. But he's so careful, I'm amazed at how gracious he is to bring the believer along so he doesn't harm them as they're learning that. Oh my goodness, sin does have a control of me at times.

But I'm free. But I really want to be free experientially. How's that going to work out? Well, understanding that principle is part of it. I'm either controlled by sin or I'm controlled by the Holy Spirit. There's no middle ground. It's either one or the other. That's a tough lesson to learn because I've been reading the Constitution and I'm a free entity and I can decide.

It's almost like it was part of a fall. Oh yeah? What do you mean by that? I just showed up, you know? I is the whole problem. I mean really, I is the whole problem. Because sometimes you'll say the answer is that you're dead. But then I'll go, that old sin nature doesn't seem dead to me.

Well, look at this. I somehow got this thing hung up. There we go. Moving through the cross, we want to be on one side or the other. Right now, we're here. We're learning what happened here. At some point, it's not only dead. When we get to 612, it says, Reckon you, reckon yourself to be dead unto sin, that's this side, but alive unto God. This side is a living, alive unto God, walking by faith and rest. If you don't have the facts and the mechanics of how we got you there, you don't have the material to rest in. Do you see that? I think the issue with that feeling like you're in the middle is you're thinking, oh I can choose to respond to sin or I can choose to respond to the Lord.

But when he's saying consider yourself dead to sin, you know, When you look at a dead person, you say, hey, they're not going to say hi back. Yeah, hey, what's happening? So, you know, if SIN is knocking on your door and that temptation is there, are you supposed to say hi to SIN?

No, you're supposed to consider yourself dead. So you would be unresponsive, just like someone who is physically dead. Unresponsive nature. Yeah, that's cool. So I guess you kind of have to take that, I don't have a choice. in the matter, I mean naturally in my natural state of mind or that fall back is going walking with the flesh and being in that fleshly manner but you know you do have the choice to say but I'm alive to Christ. That's right. And who's job is it to persuade you about that? It's the spirit's job. You think he's good at it? He's the only one who can do it.

Is that the second bell? Well, we didn't get very far, but we did get very far. Okay, so we'll pick up probably starting at question five. We could spend the next month on question five. Okay, let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for what you've done to each one of us, and we look forward to your continuing to teach us that we might continue to grow in the knowledge and rest in the grace of your dear son, the Lord Jesus. We pray in his precious name. Amen.