Galatians 2:19-21 - With Christ

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a re-recording of the Sunday Morning Service, where we covered Galatians two, nineteen through twenty-one.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll have a word of prayer and we'll get right into our study.

[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, praise you and we thank you for the opportunity to dig into your word.

[SPEAKER_00]: For the opportunity to spend time looking at what it has to say and what it means to know and follow you more and more with each passing day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Prayed this to you would be at a fine revival where as we look at these truths that you have given us as it reveals the truth, your son Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: It would be further and further transformed from glory to glory.

[SPEAKER_00]: Christ, name we pray.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I started with our passage, Galatians two, nineteen through twenty one reads, for through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live and the flesh I live by faith and the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to notice as we go into the study that there's a great deal of overlap and we're going to borrow a lot of verses or look over quite a bit to Romans chapter six seven and eight.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's because they're both books that seek to set out the truth of this amazing salvation that has been given to us and set out for us in Christ Jesus, which is a phenomenal thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we see that the gospel of John, Romans, Galatians, first and second Corinthians to some extent, Hebrews to a great extent, and even the book of Jude sort of cover those basics very very well, which hopefully enables us to come to an even greater understanding of books like Ephesians, Philippians, and Coashians that give us a better and clearer understanding of

[SPEAKER_00]: our identification with Christ and what that means, and then reading James, first through third John, first and second Peter, we have an appreciation for what those authors took for granted in teaching us about what a consistent, logically consistent Christians life is.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is the life of Christ within the believer.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll look like

[SPEAKER_00]: what they're writing about.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we may even think of another layer upon that in the first and second Timothy and Titus giving really clear objective revelation is to what a mature believer looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what church leadership is meant to look like and what is meant to prepare a person for that church leadership.

[SPEAKER_00]: including their most importantly their character and also including their gifting.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's some phenomenal information and all of that should lead us up to a clear understanding of prophecy.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have first the second Thessalonians and Revelation and just to what like to point out that most people who have some severe problems in their end times beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is actually rooted all the way at the bottom of the pyramid in the Gospel of John, a misunderstanding of Romans, a misunderstanding of Galatians.

[SPEAKER_00]: And some sort of legalism at that very beginning, that very core of their understanding of the Christian faith, inevitably is going to turn them to a legalistic, even a fear-based understanding of all that is to come and not understand the blessed hope and not understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: all that we have to look forward to because that winds up being contingent.

[SPEAKER_00]: So contingent on something more than just faith in Christ, which is scripture is very clear that it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: That being said, we left Peter and Paul

[SPEAKER_00]: in the middle of, actually we'd love Paul in the middle of a speech.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is addressing the second part of that speech.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would want to make it known that not all commentators are agreed that the speech Paul speech goes through the end of the chapter.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, I think his use of I. We language and

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, his use of those pronouns seems to insinuate very heavily that his speech did not stop there, however.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a massive amount of interpretive importance, so I wouldn't want to make it overly, or overly accentuated.

[SPEAKER_00]: Peter and Paul

[SPEAKER_00]: though had already agreed upon the gospel.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we remember this from the time when Peter and Paul were having their meeting in Jerusalem.

[SPEAKER_00]: The very first time it seems, they're only a fourteen-day visit that was recorded in Galatians.

[SPEAKER_00]: It seems very clear when he took Barnabas down and he took

[SPEAKER_00]: Titus down with him that Peter and Paul did not have any massive disagreement about what it was that the gospel or what constituted the gospel, what made a person save, they recognized that Titus knew the Lord and that there was no reason to compel him to become circumcised.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Peter and Paul, as we've seen and already agreed upon this, they've already seen very much I'd

[SPEAKER_00]: Peter, however, as we saw in the previous studies, had begun to deny the gospel by his actions and catering to the legalists.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we got to look a little bit deeper into Peter's possible motivations in previous weeks and see that sometimes he's given this, we'll just say a bum wrap.

[SPEAKER_00]: in terms of his motivation and suggesting that he was, you know, we're even playing him off to be some sort of doofus, but at the end of the day we saw that it's quite likely, at least in my view, that Peter was not

[SPEAKER_00]: so much motivated by any desire to pervert the gospel, but as Paul rightly said, fear of these legalists and fear of these Judaizers that they might likely destroy his ministry or try to tarnish his reputation.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he was in many ways, for sure, you know, pandering and catering, doing something that was inappropriate.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it wasn't in his words that he ever seemed to have denied the gospel.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was just in his actions.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was in his fear that these people were going to cause problems for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a fascinating development and something that should be very sobering to every believer today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because if Peter and Barnabas and all of these are the Christians could fall back into some sort of legalism, then you can bet that we can as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: So given the nature of this Paul publicly confronted

[SPEAKER_00]: Peter, Paul repeatedly declared that through law-keeping, no one will just be justified.

[SPEAKER_00]: We saw this in the previous verses again and again, Paul writes, by keeping of the law, no flesh actually, it says literally in the Greek, all flesh will not be justified through the keeping of the law.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once this point in that repetition and that repetition and that small little chiasm that we saw in those verses, that

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul wants to be in fatic about the reality that there's no justification.

[SPEAKER_00]: No one will be declared righteous by the keeping of the law.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's simply an impossibility.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not what the law was meant to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not what the law was, something the law was able to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: but only faith in Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what he puts at the center of that mirror image and writing that chiaism.

[SPEAKER_00]: He puts faith on both sides and makes sort of a faith sandwich out of his, the, the, the law can't justify the law can't justify and write in the middle.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's that faith is, that they had believed in Christ is kind of at the center, is at, is at the center of the chiaism.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that brings us up to date.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we start our study in routine, resume, teen today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul writes, through the law, I die to the law so that I might live to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So now we get to talk about death and dying.

[SPEAKER_00]: A death in Scripture always means separation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Death is not used to insinuate annihilation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Death is when one thing is separated from another, it's called death and there's plenty of different instances of this in examples of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: in Scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, the very first type of death that we ever see is spiritual death wherein man is separated from God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that, of course, introducing sin into the world leads into introducing physical death in the world wherein the material part of man and the immaterial part of man are separated from one another.

[SPEAKER_00]: We also have reproductive death where a person is said to be dead and it's not that they're dead physically.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just that they're past the age of reproducing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a separation from the ability to reproduce if you like.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this kind of constant theme that death is defined in Scripture from the very beginning as a separation.

[SPEAKER_00]: An unbeliever

[SPEAKER_00]: each of us was separated from God and spiritual death.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, what we're talking about in this passage today, or what Paul's writing about in this passage today, is death to the law of Moses.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see, the law of Moses was never in any principle of law, is never able to give life.

[SPEAKER_00]: In Christ, the believer is dead to or separated from the law of Moses and the principle of the law altogether.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that, if there were one major point of this verse that that's it, the believer is separated from in Christ dead to the law of Moses.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there we had the principle of law altogether.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have some other verses that confirm and talk about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Romans seven, four through six reads, therefore my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: so that you might be joined to another to him who is raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God.

[SPEAKER_00]: For while we were in the flesh the sinful passions which were aroused by the law

[SPEAKER_00]: We're at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.

[SPEAKER_00]: But now we have been released from the law, having died to that which we were bound, so that we serve a newness of spirit and not the oldness of the letter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's Romans four, seven, four, three, six.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some points I want to point out to make here as we look at these verses.

[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, he says, you were made to die to the law through the body of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is in Jesus Christ and our position in Him that we are separated from the law.

[SPEAKER_00]: Never to be under it or united to it again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Never to be victims of its tyranny.

[SPEAKER_00]: so that you might find your joint ticket to another to him who raised us from the dead.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the point, again, in Paul's consistent and writing about this, we're separated from the law so that we may be united to Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore it follows quite easily and reasonably that as we try to re-wed or re-unite ourselves to the law that we're not going to experience the union and unity that is ours in Christ, with Christ in Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: In order that we might bear fruit for God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we would add to that the fact that the believer attempting to live under law or trying to put himself back under law will also not bear fruit for God because it's it's men's good works and it falls far short of what the Lord is meaning to do in us.

[SPEAKER_00]: So while we're in the flesh sinful passions which were aroused by the law,

[SPEAKER_00]: we're working, members of body and to bear fruit for death.

[SPEAKER_00]: So again, putting ourselves under the context of law as, again, Paul's so consistent with writing and the Lord by the Holy Spirit is so good to start revealing to us, is that putting ourselves under the position of law always brings our sin nature into the power seat into the control seat.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it puts us in focus, again, it puts our lives in our

[SPEAKER_00]: desires and our lesson in the in the driver's seat again even if it's just to try to restrain those or find a better way to deal with those it falls short again of the life which is ours in Christ so then released to the law again having been died to that which we were bound

[SPEAKER_00]: to serve in the newness of the spirit and not in the oldest of the letter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Second Corinthians three seven says something even more are also remarkable.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says, but if the ministry of death in letters engraved on stones came with glory, so the sons of Israel could not look intently on the face of Moses because the glorious face fading as it was, second Corinthians three seven is talking about the law.

[SPEAKER_00]: and the relationship and he calls the law a ministry of death and it's quite interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: He talks about the letters engraved on stones.

[SPEAKER_00]: the letters engraved on stones.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is a direct reference to the Ten Commandments.

[SPEAKER_00]: And very frequently we'll get Christians say, well, it's not all those other laws, but we're still under the Ten Commandments.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the Ten Commandments is all that's left, or maybe the Ten Commandments minus this one plus that one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so on and so forth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet Paul calls, even specifically the Ten Commandments, a ministry of death.

[SPEAKER_00]: obviously is it not meant or appropriate for the believer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ephesians two fifteen says abolishing his flesh the enmity which was the law of commandments contained in ordinances so that in himself he might take make the two into one new man that's establishing peace.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we have the situation in the book of Ephesians

[SPEAKER_00]: that the Jewish and Gentile believers were not getting on terribly well.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not experiencing the unity that they were meant to because of the restrictions of the law on the Jewish contingent, the ethnic Jewish contingent of Christians.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to make ultimately plain because we will contend very strongly that the believer is not under law, is not under any system of law and the punishment and reward system that comes out of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, that is not to say by any stretch of the imagination that there is no standard of righteousness, the distinction that we have in the church age and in this time in which we live is not a, again, go do whatever you want.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the new standard is the life of Christ within us.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not any set of four, five, ten, six, four hundred and twenty, six or six hundred and thirteen rules that were meant to keep.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the realization, the full realization that only the life of Christ within us will exhibit the full time, one hundred percent supernatural righteousness, love and life that is meant to be flowing forth from a believer.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not a matter of, again, a system of punishments and rewards like the law, but it's rather Christ's full-time character of righteousness coming out of the believer every moment that we rest in him, which we will get into in greater depth, but I do want to make sure to make it quite plain that no one is suggesting that Christians ought to go do and sin whatever they want as they like, that grace may have bound.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Paul himself is obviously

[SPEAKER_00]: very adverse to that perversion of the truth in Roman sex, but it doesn't change the reality that the believer is him or herself not under law in any stretch of the imagination.

[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that we are now dead to the law is good news, but what follows is great news.

[SPEAKER_00]: Being separated from the law means that we are now alive, united to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Say far greater thing, even than being separated from the system of punishments and rewards of the law.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a greater blessing by far.

[SPEAKER_00]: The unity being united to God, being made alive.

[SPEAKER_00]: to God, here in Christ, is absolutely the joyous function of His grace that we're getting to study today.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a long as a believer attempts to live under the law, the sin nature is His Master, Romans six, fourteen reads, for sins shall not be master over you for you, not under law.

[SPEAKER_00]: but under grace.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to reiterate this because it's so vital.

[SPEAKER_00]: The believer living his or her life under any system of dues and don'ts for rewards or to avoid punishments is

[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, acting as the slave of the sin nature, whether they know it or not, whether they're quote unquote succeeding in their legalism or not, the sin nature is running the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: The sin principle within them is calling all the shots, even if all quote unquote good things are being done.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is of the utmost importance.

[SPEAKER_00]: We oftentimes will judge our own lives by what is or isn't coming out and how I feel like I'm better than the Joneses or better than so and so down the street or I've never done these five things that other people have done.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the reality is, is if we are in any way appealing to some legalistic standard or legalistic way of thinking,

[SPEAKER_00]: than ultimately, even though that those attractive things are coming out of us, the Sin Nature is still the one calling the shots is still the one in charge.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's still the one who's bringing forth his works.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's works not the fruit of the Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: far from this, the believer is trusting in Christ, actually walks in newness of life, Roman VI forces, therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead, so through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is what we're given.

[SPEAKER_00]: Walking completely, totally,

[SPEAKER_00]: entirely in newness of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope that distinction is so plain, so clear to each of us that seeking to find any set of one, two, seven, ten, twenty, four, six, hundred, and fourteen rules are laws to obey.

[SPEAKER_00]: will never bring about the love and the grace and the true righteousness of Christ's life within us that is so thorough going that goes down to our our very thoughts and we will get to the end of that time of our time on this planet and see that righteousness having grown in our life and say that was by his grace that is for his glory that was the life of Christ within me which I had no ability to fake

[SPEAKER_00]: to work towards or to maintain on my own.

[SPEAKER_00]: All I could do is rest in the perfect work and amazing sacrifice and continued empowerment of Jesus Christ in his Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the place the believer needs to come to make sure to walk in newness of life, not to reform our old life by any stretch of the imagination.

[SPEAKER_00]: Moving on to our next verse, Galatians, to twenty reads, I have been crucified with Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: We may be tempted to ask, why does Paul use the words I and me instead of we?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why does he move to the very personal singular pronouns and start talking about himself instead of including all Christians in this?

[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that this is personal and true, obviously this is true of every believer, but I think even to Paul that this truth was so precious and so personal and so dear to him that he couldn't pass through it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He couldn't pass up an opportunity to talk about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: without also a personally appropriating it, without claiming it as his own, without knowing and stating with great boldness that this is the life by which he lives, and this is the life by which every believer today is to live.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to note that this identification that we're going to come up is a spiritually revealed fact.

[SPEAKER_00]: You get all the people in the world who only know the gospel, only know the message of Christ dying for their sins, which is fantastic.

[SPEAKER_00]: They know the Lord, they're in a relationship with Him, but apart from God's Word, we would not be able to discern or see or know this spiritually revealed truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why every believer needs to be regularly in the Bible and in Bible study and in situations where you're getting taught the word because there are these spiritually revealed facts much like this one that no amount of Christian experience will make us understand but the word makes extraordinarily clear as we go to it with humility and by the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is a spiritually revealed fact.

[SPEAKER_00]: Note that this phrase in your English Bible, I have been crucified with translates one big Greek compound word.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to do just a little bit of Greek grammar here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you can forgive me, but this should be fairly painless because it also relates in some sense to the English grammar.

[SPEAKER_00]: Perfect tense.

[SPEAKER_00]: This I have been crucified with is an English brought across just as it is in the Greek and the perfect tense.

[SPEAKER_00]: The perfect tense is in English as in Greek, or in Greek as in English, if you like, is a tense that denotes something being completed, something done, something finished, and not needing to be

[SPEAKER_00]: repeated given the context and the nature of the thing being done.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you ask a child, have you done, have you done your homework?

[SPEAKER_00]: And they say, yes, I have done my homework, what is meant by what they're said very plainly.

[SPEAKER_00]: is that their homework is finished and does not need to be repeated or read on that assignment is complete.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so this having been crucified with Christ is something done once in the past tense and it doesn't need to be repeated.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the spiritual reality of every believer having been in the past crucified with Christ and we'll see when that happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: Next, in the passive voice, is not something that we do.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that the Lord does.

[SPEAKER_00]: The passive voice, you know, the ball was hit by the boy where the action is happening to the subject.

[SPEAKER_00]: The action is happening to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are being crucified with Christ by another.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that the Lord does.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in choosing in his sovereignty and his omnipotence and his

[SPEAKER_00]: omniscience, enshusing crucifixion for the manner in which Jesus Christ would die to pay for the sins of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: God chose one of the forms of death and execution that could never be self-inflicted.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul does not say I crucify myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul does not encourage believers to try to crucify themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: He only lets us know.

[SPEAKER_00]: that we have been passively included in Christ's crucifixion at the cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not because of what we have done, but because how he spiritually reckoned it unto us, just like we saw in the previous study, with justification, the Lord taking our sin and placing it on Christ at the cross, the Lord taking Christ's righteousness and moving it to our account.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, finally, this is in the indicative mood, which is not something that we necessarily have as expressly in English or as direct way across.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, the indicative mood is the mood of truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, it is the mood in which you're not suggesting that this might happen, could happen, would happen, or just for arguments sake.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the mood of something that is actually happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when Paul says he's been crucified with Christ, he's not speaking in some sort of figurative language.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying that this is an absolute spiritual reality.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, he doesn't have the memories of it, neither do we.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it is the absolute spiritual reality.

[SPEAKER_00]: that we have been crucified with Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would like to talk about the powerful word with here.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the prefix soon in the Greek.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's part of that one big compound word.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a big, powerful, meaty word for us as believers today.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this word with is very important because it has much the same meaning or as very much the same meaning in Greek as it does in English.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I were to say that I went to church with my wife, you would not assume that she went to church at A.A.M.

[SPEAKER_00]: and I went to church at three o'clock in the afternoon, long after she'd left, you would say you would not say that I went to church with my wife at that point.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd say I went to church after my wife or went to the same church as my wife, but not with.

[SPEAKER_00]: with means we both did it at the same time furthermore you wouldn't be able to say I went to church with my wife if we went at the same time but went to different buildings you know they go to church with your wife if if I went to this church and she went to that church you would say you went to church at the same time but you didn't go to church with or together with with that person so

[SPEAKER_00]: This wonderful word with, as applied to this situation, should be a little bit mind-blowing for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: It might even blow our circuits.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what we have is the all-powerful, amazing work of God in including us with Christ, in terms of the spiritual reality, including us with Christ in His crucifixion.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here is one of the

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the many clear passages in the New Testament that states beyond any quite shadow of a doubt that when Jesus Christ was crucified, so is I. When Jesus Christ was crucified, some two thousand years ago on a hell outside of Jerusalem, I spiritually speaking was there, and we may be tempted to ask, how can God do that?

[SPEAKER_00]: and the answer quite simply is that God exists entirely outside of time.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it is no trouble for God to identify me or associate me with an event that happened somewhere else in time.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you imagine a pen or a ruler, it's easy for us because we're not stuck within the ruler somewhere to perceive the ruler as a whole and possibly identify one part with the other.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, all right, very similarly, rather, that is how God looks at time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And He is able to spiritually reckon or spiritually place us who believe in Jesus Christ within Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that it can be truly, spiritually said or truly said that we were spiritually crucified with Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once again, done and not needed repeating, passive, something done to us,

[SPEAKER_00]: and as an absolute spiritual reality, more trustworthy than your own eyes, more trustworthy than your own experiences, and certainly more trustworthy than our signature would have us believe when we walk according to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, I just wanted to break off, if you have the notes, then this is here for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I wanted to talk about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: We talk about identification, which is really the main thrust of these verses that we're studying today.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, we'll find that the word identification as such is not found in the word.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a useful handle for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We like to use the word identification because it conveys the concept clearly.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, when we're building this our understanding of what it means to be identified with Christ, we don't look for the word identification in Scripture or identify in Scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: We look for a couple other keywords.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of them is in.

[SPEAKER_00]: This phrase in Christ and there's another phrase that is very frequently by in Adam the non-believers said to be in Adam a lot of first Corinthians fifteen like and the believers said to be in Christ and say positional statement were placed within sharing the destiny of and the Greek proposition in much like our proposition in has the sense of something being fully within another thing or another sphere

[SPEAKER_00]: So you wouldn't say that the paper was in the book if it was hanging out on all four sides or just in the book by the very corner of the piece of paper.

[SPEAKER_00]: In meant completely in, totally in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And because we're in Christ, just as we might put a piece of paper in a book, we share the destiny of Jesus Christ completely on merit of the fact that that is Christ destiny.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have the word with, which we just studied, something innately joined in action and consequence.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when the Bible says we were crucified with Christ, it means spiritually at the precise moment Christ was crucified so then were we.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was when our spiritual history was replaced with his.

[SPEAKER_00]: Together with the same as above, but also underscoring more even more so that the unity in identity and action

[SPEAKER_00]: The word united with, you'll see crop up and those are words of identification as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: It implies a oneness and a spiritual oneness being what's communicated.

[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, baptized into the word baptism is so funny because it's gained such a spiritual stigma and a religious stigma over the past years.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the word itself is really an un-bath or un-translated Greek word which would be better off.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think we don't be better off.

[SPEAKER_00]: We just translate it as what it means, which is immersed.

[SPEAKER_00]: It means to be immersed in or terribly placed into, so to be permanently changed by that immersion or entire placement.

[SPEAKER_00]: The idea of being, we are immersed completely in Christ and permanently changed by that immersion.

[SPEAKER_00]: So water baptism is a symbol of that spiritual reality.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul goes on to say, it is no longer I who live.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul first expressed the unchangeable spiritual fact of our co-cruise of fiction with Christ, our eternal position in him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now Paul talks about living our day-to-day lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a time that I'd like to ask if you ever felt like life was just too much.

[SPEAKER_00]: for you, the deed, stressed, defeated, frightened, nervous, worried, going for hours, just describing human experiences that lead us to the place of thinking that this is all too much.

[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe like me, you have come to the nearly comical and saddening realization that on the days when you feel the most want to give up, are not necessarily your worst days.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're frustrated, we're spread to thin, we're stressed, and all these other horrible things are happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we feel like life is just far too much.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when someone takes up a regular accounting of what went on during the course of that day or when I take up regular accounting and what went on during the course of that day that I felt was so awful, I find that it was very seldom much different from other days.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what was the distinction?

[SPEAKER_00]: The distinction was within me.

[SPEAKER_00]: The distinction was within me, either looking and trusting Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you've found that person you simply can't love, they annoy you and you know that you know that as a believer you're meant to be marked by love and yet you're unable to love this other believer.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: You're right.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can't love that person.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're right.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is too much for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're right.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can't do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the good news.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're never meant to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Christ was meant.

[SPEAKER_00]: He always meant to live his life out in you that you would rest in him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that he would live his life out in you.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why you were crucified with Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: You were buried with Christ, dead forever, separated from your sin nature, the law, and this world.

[SPEAKER_00]: You raised with Christ when He walked out of that tomb.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a mass, a spiritually speaking, a mass exodus of everyone who would put their faith in Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: walking out of that tomb into newness of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: You were ascended with him if you put your faith in him.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have, as we read about in the first chapter of Acts, as Jesus Christ lifted up off of the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: You were spiritually associated with him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when he was seated at the right hand of the Father in the heavenly places, you are in Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you are seated in Him far above every principality and power, far above any name that can be named, far above any authority of this world, far above any situation and what it can do, that is where you are permanently and eternally seated with Jesus Christ if you've trusted in Him and His sacrifice for your sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is to be your motivating procedure every moment, every day of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a believer in Jesus Christ, a number of permanent irreversible things happen to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: John one, twelve to thirteen tells us you've been born again, made a child of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've been made a child of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: not from that will of man but because of God's will.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've been dealt in dwelt and sealed with the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's both permanent situations where in the Holy Spirit comes into you and stays in you and seals you like an official legal document binding an unbreakable based on the authority of the one ceiling.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this case, there's no authority higher than this ceiling that you've received in Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ephesians one thirteen through fourteen talks about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're permanently identified with Christ in his death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding, Romans six, one through eleven, and Ephesians two, four through seven, deal with that amongst other passages.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're resting, you're a mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere mere

[SPEAKER_00]: gazing at Him, trusting in Him, letting Him do in us and through us what He always meant to do for His glory.

[SPEAKER_00]: Romans six eleven gives us the secret to victory over sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: Does even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus?

[SPEAKER_00]: This verse is a simple recapitulation, a repetition, almost, of what he'd already been talking about in Romans six, one through ten.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have been as a spiritual fact, and the spiritual reality is greater and more reliable than the physical reality upon which we base so many of our decisions.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have been

[SPEAKER_00]: made or united to Christ in his death burial resurrection, in the case from six.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the spiritual reality.

[SPEAKER_00]: What keeps us continually walking in sin, what keeps us continually slave to our sin nature?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not reckoning, not considering, and that we're considered translates, so we're also translated reckoned occasionally in the Old King James.

[SPEAKER_00]: The idea is, put it down as a fact.

[SPEAKER_00]: Put it down as a reality and count on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Trust in it is in everyday realization.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is necessary for life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Put it down as a fact that we really are dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is how we have victory over sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is how we have victory over

[SPEAKER_00]: over fear, over worried, all the other expressions of our sin nature that we see.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's trusting that what Christ did was exactly as effective as what He says it was in us.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says it is in us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul then tells us how each day should look for a believer in Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're ready?

[SPEAKER_00]: This is day by day, moment by moment, practical Bible truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here he's talking about our flesh and flesh in this context means our physical body.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are other places where flesh can mean this in nature here.

[SPEAKER_00]: It means fairly clearly just our physical, the corpse that we walk around in.

[SPEAKER_00]: What are the possibilities for life in the flesh?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's got to be more opportunities or possibilities than just

[SPEAKER_00]: living in this way that Paul talks about.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we could go the Benjamin Franklin method, Benjamin Franklin, kept a list of virtues that he valued and wanted to cultivate an each day would rate himself at how he did, or you know, some honesty and self-examination, and how he did it, keeping those virtues up to snuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: And interestingly, never conquered them in any substantial or final form.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet we could do the same thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: We could get some list of virtues or some list of goals and continually try to check off what it is that, you know, how much we felt subjectively like we lived up to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And feel like we have some control, but that would not fall far short.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can choose the path of fear, worry, bitterness, or anger.

[SPEAKER_00]: but basically they're all the same choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't seem like it, but they really are.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whether it's choosing to fear and be totally self-absorbed and self-concerned and run from life or in situations or worry about it and puzzle over it and concern ourselves with excessive handling or to become bitter and jaded

[SPEAKER_00]: or even to become explosively angry.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're all the same thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're using emotion.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're using an essence.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our feelings to be a control freak.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're attempting to control our world around us by what we think and what we say and what we do.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not meant for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Next, super-stition.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whether that is black cats and voododols and Friday the thirteenth and lucky horseshoes.

[SPEAKER_00]: or lucky pennies or the more quote unquote Christianized superstition of believing that if I'm in church then God's going to bless me and everything's gonna go well or if I do these five good things or if I give enough money God will give me back more money and on and on and on there is enough Christian superstition to fill book upon book upon book but essentially that's all it is

[SPEAKER_00]: The Christian faith tragically can be nothing more than someone's or our knock-on wood, or our lucky penny, or our don't break a mirror, don't walk under a ladder, superstition.

[SPEAKER_00]: in order to try to gain some control or hope that we can overt some sort of bad luck.

[SPEAKER_00]: Another very easy route for us to choose is the route of legalism, whether that's looking at my own sin and trying to keep myself up to some list or more than likely looking at you and or anyone else.

[SPEAKER_00]: and trying to find out what their sins are so that I could judge them and of course feel better about myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: The point, none of these are appropriate for the believer.

[SPEAKER_00]: None of these modus operandi, none of these ways of getting through our day-to-day lives are appropriate, are going to be productive, are going to grow us in Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are all easily categorizable as sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: The only thing that is available, the only thing that makes any sense for the believer logically, as well as spiritually, is living by faith, by trusting in Jesus Christ day by day, moment, by moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: We may be tempted to ask, what does that practically work out to?

[SPEAKER_00]: What does that practically look like in terms of the day-to-day grind?

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe at work.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean as we spend our day typing away at a computer?

[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean in our family?

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean to trust in Christ moment by moment as we go to kids and grandkids soccer games as we have conversations with our loved ones?

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean as the economy tanks or as a job as lost or as prices inflate?

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean if we're dealing with health or our unhealthfulness or sickness or pain or disease?

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean to trust in Christ in each of those situations?

[SPEAKER_00]: Wouldn't we love to just have a manual when this is happening?

[SPEAKER_00]: This do this when that's happening do that?

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet the Bible doesn't operate that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible gives us principles to work from.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the principle here is trusting Christ at each moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: And at each moment it'll mean something quite different.

[SPEAKER_00]: It might look, sorry, quite different.

[SPEAKER_00]: in trusting in our work relationship, maybe trusting that as we continue to seek after him, that he will see that path continues.

[SPEAKER_00]: He means to for our own edification and growth.

[SPEAKER_00]: With our physical health, it could mean trusting him to be glorified through our sickness and his ability to heal us when what we're meant to be growing from it has been completed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever the case, whatever the situation, trusting in Christ, is meant to be the way the believer lives his life.

[SPEAKER_00]: The life I live in the body, I live by faith, by trusting, by an active act of choosing to trust in the Son of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: who loved me and gave himself for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus Christ is the fullest expression of the perfect and amazing love of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: The simple question bears repeating, do you believe that God loves you?

[SPEAKER_00]: He demonstrated on a cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's already been etched in the walls of history.

[SPEAKER_00]: That stake piercing through time from eternity where God, the very God of the universe, put on flesh.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it allowed himself to be humiliated and crucified for the love of those who had placed their faith in Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: God loves not just a feeling, it's expressed in action.

[SPEAKER_00]: You trust in that love.

[SPEAKER_00]: You trust in that love to do what is very best for you in every situation because that's what his love does.

[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't mean that every situation will be the best or the one we hope for.

[SPEAKER_00]: It means that he will seek your greatest good, the greatest good for you in every situation and the greatest good for you and the greatest good for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: is being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not prosperity, doctrine, or gospel business.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no.

[SPEAKER_00]: That falls so far short of all the God plans for us in Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the reality, at every moment, and at recitation, no matter how horrible, challenging, or wonderful, and joyful.

[SPEAKER_00]: is meant by God to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ, and we're meant to trust in Him through each step in each challenge and each fear and each moment of that process, even when that means pain, trouble, or difficulty.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus Christ died on a cross for you and I that we would live in Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Moving on to the final verse verse study, I do not nullify the grace of God, where righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly.

[SPEAKER_00]: These verses are, again, as sort of chias and more verses today, not as sort of the archias.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our life of many chias, and our life with Christ is the meat in this sandwicher, in this kind of mirror image.

[SPEAKER_00]: Between two statements of the believer's separation from the principle of law,

[SPEAKER_00]: We saw that the form of the chasm, which is very common in the New Testament times, a regular way of organizing your thoughts, would repeat an idea that was important in different ways, kind of going out in the mirror image, and putting the main point at the center.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you get the added bonuses of having clarity or clarification in the outer points and knowing exactly what the main point is.

[SPEAKER_00]: The main point here

[SPEAKER_00]: is what we just studied.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's surrounded on both sides by the bread of the believer's total self separation from the principle of law and the mosaic law at large.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nullify here, he says, I do not nullify the grace of God, it means to reject misplaced, get rid of or despise.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is shocking.

[SPEAKER_00]: This should absolutely take us by surprise how firm and how resolute the statement is.

[SPEAKER_00]: Putting a believer back under law effectively nullifies the grace of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not to say that the believer who's placed their faith in Christ once and then goes back to a legalism is not saved, far from it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what it does is that believer is essentially telling Jesus Christ that his death on the cross was a waste of time.

[SPEAKER_00]: That should be the most appallingly offensive statement ever to leave the lips of the man.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, that's exactly what putting the believer back under law does.

[SPEAKER_00]: It tells Jesus Christ the God of the universe that His actions on the cross for our on our behalf were a waste of time.

[SPEAKER_00]: but it actually gets much worse.

[SPEAKER_00]: If Jesus did not put on human flesh or Jesus did not put on human flesh to come down to earth and embrace the ultimate humiliation of the cross just to make things easier for us to keep some small-minded set of rules.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus Christ did not come down for something so petty as getting us a hall pass

[SPEAKER_00]: so that we could get up and try again on some petty set of ten or fifteen rules.

[SPEAKER_00]: The believer hopes to gain righteousness through the loss as an effect that Christ's death on the cross was useless vain.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think the thing we want to ask because we would probably not say that with our words, although we would certainly imply it with our legalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to note that just as Peter, which is the occasion for this speech that Paul's giving, Peter could deny the gospel in his actions while still affirming it in his words, so can we do and so is a great threat for every believer that in our words we could talk about salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in our actions, deny

[SPEAKER_00]: or suggest that something else needs to be put in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have to look like me, you have to look, it has to look like I wanted to look, it has to sound like I wanted to sound and so on and so on and so on and that is unacceptable.

[SPEAKER_00]: getting to the point.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've trusted in Jesus Christ, this is true of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: This identification with Christ is yours to have and to hold and you can truly say, with Paul in a hundred percent clear conscience, I have been crucified with Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is no longer I who live, it is Christ who lives in me.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are positioned eternally in Jesus Christ if you've placed your faith in Him and His payment for your sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are meant to live each day trusting in Him at each every moment in every situation.

[SPEAKER_00]: When a note that when we're disappointed in ourselves, we're conquered or defeated by sin again.

[SPEAKER_00]: It only proves that we are still trusting in ourselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're only putting more continuing to put confidence in our flesh.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when we do mess up, make mistakes, walk and sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: It should be only a clear reminder that at some point we were trusting in our flesh and bring us back humbly and honestly to the realization that we will need to rely and trust and live by faith in the Son of God and that alone in each moment and each day in each situation showing us what it means to trust and Christ more and more day by day.

[SPEAKER_00]: We pray with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for your wonderful word, prayer identification with us as believers.

[SPEAKER_00]: How blessed Lord, to get to go through this study, and yet again, we praise you, and we thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: In Jesus' name, we pray.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.