Gooding, David: 4 - The Magnitude of the Gospel

Just so that we can take our bearings, shall we notice that at the beginning of chapter six we begin the first of three questions that are raised, and the answers are subsequently given to them. The first question, chapter six verse one: What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? That question is answered in the following verses, down to verse fourteen. Then in fifteen, another question. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? And that is answered in the following verses, up to chapter seven verse six. And then the third question, chapter seven verse seven: what shall we say then? Is the law sin? And you'll notice, of course, that those three questions are not simply repetitions one of the other, they are different. The first question is, shall we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? And the second question, shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? And the third question, is the law sin? Now let's go back and read the detailed answer to the first two questions. What shall we then say? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein? Or are you ignorant that all we who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him. I ask you particularly to notice that translation, our old man was crucified with him. Your authorized version says is crucified with him. And in the days when the authorized version was translated, that was an exceedingly good translation. It is, however, Old English. It is the past perfect tense. It is not a present tense, and unless we understand that, we might get a little bit astray in modern English. Our old man is crucified, quite correct if you understand it to mean our old man has been. Literally, our old man was crucified. In other words, it's not something that constantly happens, it's something that happened in the past once for all. Our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin. For he that hath died is justified from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more. Death hath no more dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once, but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. Let not therefore sin reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts thereof, neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves unto God as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not that to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are, whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness. But thanks be to God that whereas ye were servants of sin, ye became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto you were delivered. And being made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men, because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as ye presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity, unto iniquity, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness, unto sanctification. For when ye were servants of sin, ye were free in regard of righteousness. What fruit then had ye at that time in the things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification and the end eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And God himself give us true understanding of this somewhat difficult passage. Last week, we were examining together what hope we Christian folks may have of eventually attaining the glory of God. We had discovered in our earlier studies that the trouble of the human race can be traced back to a wrong attitude of heart to God. And when men knew God, they refused to acknowledge him, regard him as God. They refused to acknowledge their dependence of him. They refused to be thankful, and they grasped that independence. We found too that the way back to acceptance with God is simply through the reversal of that wrong attitude of heart. A man is justified by faith, we found. And faith is defined as absolute dependence upon God. No dependence in self or in our efforts or in our attainments, but solely dependent upon God, the God that raises the dead and calls the things that are not because they were. But that being so, we turned, as I say, last week to the question, what hope can we have, now that we are accepted with God, of attaining the glory of God? After all, it's one thing to be on right terms with God, isn't it? To be accepted because in Christ we have taken the right attitude to God, we have believed God, and he is prepared to count that to us for righteousness. It's one thing to be on right terms with God. What about all my wrong behavior, my wrong deeds, my false attitudes to my fellow men, to my fellow Christians, my tempers and passions? What about them? It is unthinkable, of course, that God is prepared just to ignore them and let me go on as before. His declared policy is that I should finish with them and that I should be made to behave like God behaves. What hope have I then of ever attaining that glory of God? And I raised the question last week, I hope I didn't upset anybody. I raised the question last week that if it all depends on our faith, what should happen then if tribulation should come along or some other distress so severe that I lost my faith? What then would come of my acceptance, and what would come of any hope of ever becoming like God and attaining the glory of God? And we found some of the answers last week to that question. First of all, the divine certainty, the clear, categorical statement, the Christian folk may be absolutely confident that they shall attain the glory of God. And that confidence is founded in one or two things. First of all, God tells us straightly, and he wants us to know it, that where there is true faith, tribulation in the end will but work endurance. Our faith may go up and down and in and out. Sometimes it might happen that our faith should appear to be eclipsed, as Peter's was when he denied his Lord. But precisely because we, like Peter, have a great high priest who ever intercedes for us, that our faith shall not fail, we are to know that tribulation will work endurance. I take it to be a categorical statement made by God and irrefutable. Tribulation Tribulation, works works, and endurance. doing. In the knowledge of that fact, therefore, told us by God, we can be confident who have believed in Christ that we shall at last attain the glory of God. Then we saw last week we have another ground for confidence, confidence in the love of God, in the nature of that love, in the quality of that love, in the realism of that love. The whole affair of our salvation, from first to last, depends on God's love. It was his love that conceived it. It is his love that has put it into operation. It will depend on his love to finish it, and our confidence that we shall attain his glory is founded in his love, and particularly in his realism. That his love for us does not depend on our attainment. He loved us while we were yet sinners. Moreover, the biggest obstacle in the way of our attaining the glory of God, the biggest obstacle, was in the tremendous price that had to be paid for our forgiveness. The tremendous work that had to be done, and the tremendous suffering that was entailed in reconciling us. Never an obstacle like that. Never a work like Calvary. And if Calvary has already been accomplished, then the biggest thing has already been done. We are asked to notice that God loved us and gave Christ to die for us, not after we had begun to improve, and conditionally upon our improving further. He gave Christ to die for us while we were still sinners, while we were yet enemies. And if God can love me while I was a sinner and an enemy, I may be persuaded that he will never abandon me once I have become a saint. But now tonight I want to take some time at the beginning to look at a third reason why we may be utterly confident that we shall attain the glory of God. And that third reason is given us in the second paragraph in chapter five, from verses twelve to twenty one. They are difficult verses by any standard, and I shall deliberately avoid the difficulties and expound the simple parts, and I leave you to expound the difficulties. But as I see them, those verses are telling us this, that we may be utterly confident of attaining the glory of God. Why? Because God, in his realism, has thoroughly diagnosed the roots of the trouble. And having diagnosed the root of the trouble, he has provided a salvation that is realistically geared to deal with that trouble. I warned you in our first study that we should have to come back to another diagnosis of sin, additional to the first one that we found in the early chapters. Here it is. In the first chapter, we were told that sin can be traced to a wrong attitude of heart towards God, and that attitude of heart has got to be put right. But now we're a bit further on the road. We're concerned now, we're right with God, we are concerned to, um, about this business of sanctification. And how can I be sure that God is going to make a real thoroughgoing job of it and at last conform me to his glory? Well, first, says God, let me diagnose for you the trouble. What do you really think is wrong with you? The baker has annoyed you, perhaps, with one morning. I don't know if you have a baker that sometimes annoys you. Well, anyway. And you've been so peeved that when he came, you slammed the door in his face and shouted some nasty words behind the door. Tell me, what makes you do that kind of thing? What is wrong with you? Oh, you say that's my bad temper. Oh, I see. And tell me, please, where did you get that? For, you know, there's no hope of our overcoming it, is there, unless we can find where the roots are. None of this shallow patent medicine stuff. We've got to get down to the roots of it, haven't we? Where did you get it from? Did you start up this idea of having a bad temper? Well, when you begin to ask that question, you'll find that the disease has roots longer than any oak tree. They go back down the centuries. The fact is, actually, that as we all of us sit here tonight before God, we are a bit of a mystery. Just you work out what you are. You have a body and a personality that was determined by your genes, that you inherited via your parents down myriad generations of human beings. You are a little bit secondhand, if I might point it out, uh, courteously. A lot of you was borrowed from elsewhere. Hmm. And then when you were born, poor old you, in those early infant days, before you had a lot of sense, in fact, before you knew what you were doing, you began to react to the world as you found it. And I dare say you had the best parents that anybody could ever have. And they did their best for you, but even they weren't perfect, were they? Sometimes, uh, they did things that annoyed you. Perhaps they shouldn't have done. Perhaps mother was tired out and she whacked you when she oughtn't to have done. And you began to react to her and to your father, and emotional reactions were set up in you, long before you knew what you were doing. And habits were formed, and some of them became rigid deep down in those early days in your mind, the building up of your personality, long before you could control it. Poor old you. We are aware, are we not, how the psychologists and psychiatrists can take us down, if they want to, right down to our childhood, to where our reactions had their beginning. And sometimes when people go wrong and break down in health, they can take them back to their childhood, to the point where, so to speak, they first went astray by adopting a wrong reaction and a wrong attitude to life and people. Poor little innocent child, you say, doing it before it knew what it was doing, and thereafter to bring upon itself years of misery and suffering. And as though that weren't enough, when at last you did come into the world, learn the whole you came into a world where everybody else was sinners. You didn't have a chance, did you? They were already doing wrong things, behaving as they shouldn't behave. Poor old you, if you'd come into a world of saints, you'd have had some chance, wouldn't you? You didn't have a ghost of a chance. There wasn't a man, woman, boy, or girl that you met, but what were all in some ways a little bit queer, stained with sin, reacting wrongly, somehow treating you wrongly. In a word, we, each of us, come into this world already damaged, into a world fearfully damaged, with a hereditary that's already sinful and perverse. And that temper that rose up with you that morning when you slammed the door in the old baker's face and shouted some nasty words at him, that didn't begin with you. I hope you can begin to see the point that if God is going to deal with it thoroughly, it's no good God taking superficial measures to deal with it. You have to get right down to its roots. And we may be absolutely confident, in spite of all the seemingly interminable complications of human personality, we may be absolutely confident that we shall attain the glory of God because God's salvation is realistically geared to dealing with the problem. He tells us here in chapter five that our trouble is traceable back to our forefather Adam. As through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned. Please understand, uh, what he's saying. He's not saying that everybody copied Adam's sin exactly. They didn't, did they? For Adam's sin, the Bible says here, was a transgression. Adam had a positive commandment. He was not to do this certain thing. And when he sinned, his sin took the form of a positive transgression, doing something he'd been told not to do. But there were millions of folks that came after him, and they hadn't any specific prohibition like that. And they didn't break any specific prohibition like that. And yet they died? Why did they die? They died because when Adam did that first sin, when he first transgressed, being the head of the race, he involved the whole race in the effect of his deed. And all his posterity born of him were born of a man already ruined. And all his posterity born of him were born into a world, sinners from the word go, already short of the perfection that they ought to have known. You may find some kind of sympathy in your heart. I'm not asking you to excuse men for sinning. We may not go to the lengths of some irresponsible psychiatrists and tell people that they're not responsible when they sin. That would be to reduce men to the level of a moron, of a machine. If you respect your fellow men, you'll never say in the last analysis he can't help it. He must be held to help it. But the fact is, poor man, he started off with a body-brain complex that was already ruined. How's it going to be put right? Well, says God, it will have to be put right after the similar fashion it went wrong. So if you will observe, says Paul, God's salvation proceeds on the same principle as first did Adam's sin. So Adam is a figure of him that was to come, says verse fourteen. And the argument is going to be like this, that we went wrong because Adam sinned. We are going to be put right because Christ did right. We went wrong because Adam disobeyed. We're going to be put right because Christ obeyed. We went wrong, but through no fault of our own, through some what through what someone else did. We are put right through no merit of our own, but through what someone else did. After all, it's only fair, isn't it? If God had allowed us to be born sinners because of what somebody else did, and then had asked us to put ourselves right by our own effort, wouldn't that have been grossly unjust? All God's ways are fair. If we were born sinners because of what someone else did, then God will provide a salvation that makes it possible for us to be right through what somebody else did. That's fair. In fact, says the apostle, if you're going to work it out, the balance is all together on the credit side of Christ. So while there is some similarity between Adam and what he did, and between what a Christ and what Christ is, it's not just a straight parallel with both sides being equal. There is a tremendous credit balance on the side of Christ, and your salvation not only puts right what Adam put wrong, but it does far more than put it right. When God has finished with you, my dear good Christian friend, you'll be better than Adam was before he sinned. For Christ's salvation will more than put it right. So first of all, let's see how salvation is bigger and better than what we lost in Adam. Look, if you will, in verse sixteen: And not as through one that sinned, so is the gift. For the judgment came of one unto condemnation, but the free gift came of many trespasses unto justification. Hm. That's simple, isn't it? Adam did one sin. And the effect of just one sin was to ruin a whole world and every single man, woman that's been born ever since. And you say, has one sin got that power? One sin has that power. Ah, but now you think what faced Christ? When Christ came to put it right. Not one sin, but millions of sins. If one sin had the power to put the whole world wrong, what will you say of the power of 20,000 million, million sins? Infinitely repeated. All see how much greater is the work of Christ than whatever Adam did. For this justification, we are told, the free gift came of many trespasses unto justification. Or look at it another way. Verse seventeen: if by the trespass of the one death reigned through the one, much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through one, even Jesus Christ. Oh, what a floodgate Adam opened when he sinned. Paul uses a vivid word. He says that through his disobedience, death reigned like some fearful potentate with a vast armory of tools and weapons attacking man from all sides round. All the myriad things that he uses. Death reigns. A road accident here and a virus there and a cancer somebody else. Why, if you read the medics' books and you looked at them too long, you would wonder why anybody kept alive, wouldn't you? The myriad things there are that death can use as his servants to maintain his kingdom. Death reigns. And with centuries of frantic medical effort, we have pushed back the frontiers of his kingdom. You could scarcely measure it, can you? Have we gained twenty years? Dear me, death reigned. I trust you can feel the irresistible power behind it. But if death has reigned as a result of Adam's sin, they that received the abundance of grace and this free gift, says the Bible, they shall reign in life. Oh, how confident you may be. Reign in life. With a life that is superior against every possible attack upon it. Reign in life. One day, my father, you shall know it. The full extent of your loyalty. There will dawn a day one day, when you shall be safe beyond any attack, and that forever. Adam didn't reign in life, did he? Well, he reigned for a little while, and then temptation came and sin came, but he fell like the weakling he was. And heaven itself, my brother, heaven itself and all its glittering gold would leave you empty-hearted if you had the slightest feeling that once you stepped inside its doors, you mightn't be there forever. That one of these days another temptation would come along and level you like it leveled Adam. God promises us that they that receive the abundance of his grace are not only going to get saved, but they shall positively reign in life, never again to be defeated. But when you've marked out how much greater is the work of Christ than that of Adam, then you are safe perhaps in looking at the similarity, for there are certain similarities. Have a look at one of them, verse eighteen: So then, as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation, even so through the one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. Adam disobeyed once. It was one single act that ruined the lot. Then observe, says God, that it will be one single act that will put it right. And that great act, the act of Christ's supreme obedience, when he became obedient unto death and that the death of the cross. Lo, I come to do thy will, he said. In the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, oh my God. By the which will we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once, never to be repeated. All the great act of obedience that shall make you at last attain the glory of God, my brother, that act of obedience has already been fulfilled. It's finished. It is perfect. Or look at it another way and see the similarity. Verse nineteen: for as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous. We've already noticed the point. We were made sinners, not through what we did ourselves. Oh, please get it out of our heads then, that somehow we're going to be made righteous by what we do ourselves. Now, if we were made sinners by what Adam did, we are made righteous through what Christ did. Fair? Oh, I can hear somebody objecting. They will say to me, but if you're going to say it that way round and we're made into righteous folks like that through what Christ did, that will make us feel irresponsible. We shall no longer feel that we've got to behave right. We shall be careless. We shall say it doesn't matter what we do. Shouldn't you rather preach, preach to people that it does all depend on them? Have you found it do any good? Well, you say, I think if people sort of somehow felt that it all depended on them, uh, they would behave a lot better. Ha ha, but uh, we're not talking at that level now, are we? We're talking about curing the whole disease. Have you ever known anybody who, because he felt it all depended on him, actually got rid of sin? And cleared out the roots, finished with it lock, stock and barrel, and never sinned again. Oh no, you say, but not. Well, now that is just the point, my friend. You're playing with sin. Putting a little Elastoplast under a cancer and thinking it's going to help it somehow. To tell men in their sins as they are, with all this cosmic trouble behind them, this vast heritage of sin behind them, to tell them it depends on them to release themselves, friend, it is so grotesquely unrealistic. If it weren't that we respected your good intention, we would say you were a spiritual charlatan, an absolute quack. The disease is bigger than you think. And what is more, God being the very best of doctors, you know, he decided he wouldn't cure the disease until he first exposed it. And so we're told that the law came in beside that the trespass, or do notice the word, this is verse twenty— the law came in to side that the trespass might... You know, some people would read it that the trespass might get less. You know, put the law up and that will stop people being so bad. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, friend. That's not what God had it for. The law came in to side that the trespass might abound. Not so that it might get less. You see, suppose you had, uh, poison. I had a, a, a, a, a quite a close relation of mine in his, uh, early twenties. He got a poisoned finger. And the learned, learned medics did the very best. We'll put the fault on my friend and not on the medics, shall we, just for a change. And, uh, they let it heal up, and they pressed through it seemed very good, until he was taken with the most awful pains in the body some 3 weeks, four weeks, or a month or so later, and it nearly cost him his life. When at last they found out what was the trouble of these agonizing pains, it was that the poison that had been in his finger, instead of being allowed to come out, the finger had apparently healed, and the poison had gone in and set up an abscess in his body, which nearly killed him. It wasn't a good thing to do to let it heal up without the poison coming out. That was altogether false tactics. It would have been better for them to say, no, this wound mustn't heal yet because, you know, this is more serious, young man, than you think, than to let it heal up and then go off with the idea that was everything was all right. And so that we should have a realistic understanding, God brought his law in to bring out the disease that was latent within our wicked hearts. Not to make the disease less, but to show it up. The sin, you know, is a deceitful thing. If you didn't know the truth of God's word, you would think that I'm much better than I am because I stand here preaching. But if you saw me as God sees me, you mightn't ever come and listen to me again. You know, every single one of us sitting on these seats tonight are far worse than we know we are. It is not the fact that we are a decent crowd of people, and there are a few people around us that are absolute foolishly wicked, semi-demons, but we are decent people. The fact is, as the learner Sir Herbert Butterfield has written in his study of history in Christianity, the fact is that we're every one of us wicked, and we are smitten with a disease, the potential of which is absolutely indescribable. The fact that it doesn't always blaze out and show itself is because of its deceitfulness. It lies latent in our hearts. And God, to show us that his salvation was necessary, and the lengths to which it was necessary, brought in his law that the trespass might abound. His holy law, instead of curing us, has done its job well and shown that there isn't a single man under heaven ever except Christ. For what he has sinned, miserably sinned, and constantly sinned. Oh friend, don't throw away your thermometer before you get to heaven, will you? Don't throw away God's holy law before you get to heaven, lest you should forget and think you were better than you are. Not only the world that needs to be reminded that it's a sinner, but we who are in the battle of life, professing our desire to be made holy. It is a concomitant necessity, if you will be made holy, that you will keep the law by your side, constantly to tell you where you are going wrong and how wrong you are. Because if we ever got it into our heads that we were doing so fine that we were nearly cured now, it would simply mean that the poison had gone in, and we were storing up worse trouble for a later day. But though the law showed up the disease to be what it was, and caused the trespass to abound where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. And I say again, you may have every confidence, if you be Christ, you may have every confidence that you shall attain the glory of God, because God has diagnosed your disease. And he claims his salvation, not only he can realistically cope with it, it will more than cope with it. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Well, then you say, if through trusting Christ, now I'm in Christ and I'm all right, and it depends on what Christ has done, well, then I suppose, well, wouldn't it be an idea? Shall we continue in sin then, that grace might abound more and more? Do you know, if I go to the medic and I say, you know, I have my little finger age, well, he's insulted you, say, well, don't bother that, don't come to me with that. But if I go to him, uh, riddled with cancer, diabetes, a- and leukemia, and he can cure that, well, all the more credit to the medic, I was. And says somebody, well now, if I went on sinning and showed myself to be an utter terrible man, wouldn't that be the more glory to Christ? Because that show how he could save even a man like me. As you say, that's silly. Oh, but there have been people like that down the years that are so taught. And I wouldn't put it past it to my foolish and wicked heart, one of these days to fall into a mood of thinking, ah well, it all depends on Christ. I haven't been what I ought to be, but never mind, it doesn't matter really. I'm going to heaven anyway. Oh bah. Just a minute. I thought you said you were serious in this, that you had some hope of attaining the glory of God. Did you mean that? That is what we are talking about here. What hope we have of attaining the glory of God. You don't take the view, do you, that yes, you'd like to attain the glory of God, but not just yet. You'd like a little time off to deal with that baker and tell him what you think. You'd like a little time off to do one or two other convenient but not too righteous things. And then please, when heaven is just about to begin, you'll join up again with the course, uh, and go in for being holy. You're not one of those, are you? Oh no. We are in a context of God coping with this matter of sin for those whose hearts are set on attaining the glory of God, and the very thought that we should continue in sin that grace might abound is utterly revolting. It's contradictious. It makes nonsense of our profession. For, says Paul, think for a moment what you were saying when you got baptized. What were you saying? When you were baptized, you were baptized unto Christ, you were baptized to his death, in order that, like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. That was, that was what you were saying. It was a profession that you wanted done with that past way of living, and that you wanted to walk in newness of life. That is the scheme. It stands to reason, therefore, that anybody says that, oh yes, I would like to walk in newness of life, but please not just yet. I want to continue in sin for a while. Has got the scheme altogether wrong. You may in fact doubt whether he ever really got going on the scheme at all. There is no doctor that would willingly treat a man who intended to treat ill. And God himself hasn't got a salvation for those that don't intend to be saved from sin. But then, as we think about this, uh, baptism, we begin to come to deeper depths of our salvation. And I want to raise with you a question tonight. I'm going to ask you to think about it in the coming days. Give me five minutes, therefore, so we can put the question. We're going to take it that all of us here present, we are within with God in this scheme. We want to attain the glory of God. Now the Bible says here, verse five, that we are to know this, uh, verse six, I'm sorry, know this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away. Do you see? Our old man says the Bible was crucified with Christ. That's why you get baptized, isn't it? A baptism is a burial. You only bury people that are dead. Isn't that true? Well, you, what you should have anyway. But you do up in these parts another business. But, uh, you should only bury people when they are dead. And you got baptized when you profess faith in Christ and you were buried. Uh-huh. Tell me, what was it that died? So that it had to be buried. The Bible says our old man was crucified with Christ. Tell me, who is your old man? Bring it right down to brass tacks. Please will you tell me, when the Bible says your old man was crucified with Christ, exactly what was crucified. I'm going to raise this question. I must ask your, you to excuse me if you think this is too elementary to engage your thoughts. I ask it because I find folks seriously perturbed about this thing. They would live a holy life. They want to struggle against sin, and they come across this verse, and it says, your old man was crucified. Reckon yourself therefore to be dead unto sin. So they have a go at reckoning their old man to be dead unto sin, only to find that what they're thinking about as their old man is very much alive. They come to the Bible, and they think it means my old nature has been crucified, done away with, put out of action, and lo and behold, Monday morning only has to be a few hours old, and they're as wretched and uncivil and miserable as they can be, and they find their old nature is very much alive. And they say to themselves now, how, how am I going to tell myself that my old nature is dead when all the while I find it alive? And what is the good, they say, you know, my old nature has a way of being very funny. It's precisely when I'm being tempted that my old nature is most alive, and at that precise moment, am I supposedly to believe my old nature is dead? Am I to pretend alive? Oh, well, notice somebody know what it is actually, the fact is your old nature is meant to be dead, and you've got to reckon yourself dead until it actually happens. You've got to say to yourself, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead. Until, by some kind of auto suggestion, you do die. Oh. So your baptism wasn't an acknowledgment of a fact then, it was a kind of a expression of a hope, was it, that one of these days you might die. If you reckoned yourself hard enough to be dead. That won't do it, really. It gets us into too many problems. I'm going to suggest to you that your old nature was never crucified and is still very much alive, and God is aware of it, and you ought to be too. Although the Bible doesn't say that your old nature is dead. And never asks you to believe that your old nature is dead. What does it ask you to believe in? It believes, asks you to believe that your old man, the old man, not your old man, the old man is dead. Isn't that what the verse says? Know this, that our old man was crucified with him. I'm going to suggest to you, and I shall be thinking about it in detail next week, going to suggest to you that Paul here is talking like a lawyer and is still dealing with the legal side of the case. When you got baptized and you were buried, what you were saying is this, that in God's sight, add carefully, there was crucified with Christ, not your old nature, but you. The whole of you. Lock, stock, and barrel right down to your fingertips and your hair and everything else. The whole lot of you went. As a natural man in Adam, God condemned you to die, lock, stock, and barrel, the whole lot. And for those of you who trust Christ in God's sight, that was the end of you forever. Oh, God is more realest than to try putting your old nature to death and leaving you. Hm. If God had tried to put your old nature to death, how much of you would he have left? People get an idea, don't they? There's an old man in here somewhere. Where quite he's located, who knows? But he's there somewhere. The rest of me is pretty decent. I'm normally very civil. It's wonderful how I take the confidence in myself. It's me that's civil. I'm very nice, generally, but I have this old man in here, they think, somewhere, who now and again pokes out his head. That's a delusion, my friend. Well, at any rate, when it comes to the law, God wouldn't listen at, listen to you five minutes if you talk like that, nor would any human magistrate. Would he? You're going along home from business in your, in your Jaguar one of these nights, aren't you? And there's a queue of cars and a lorry that will guide right in the middle of the road instead of hugging the curb, and you can't get by and you're late, and you get so, uh, heated up and annoyed, but presently you get a spot in the traffic, you go by, and presently the policeman gongs you. You were doing 80, sir, uh, in the built-up area. Now you have a go at explaining your old man to. You say, sir, it wasn't me that did it, it was my old man, my wretched temper. And you say, well, so it might have been, but man, I'm interested in you. You shouldn't have let your old man do it. And if it had been your old man in the form of jealousy that had led you to murder somebody in the good old days when they hanged murderer, you could have told the judge forever it wasn't you who did it, it was your old man did it, did he hang you? And when God came to deal with us, he didn't say, now, do you know those folks are ninety percent quite decent? There's just that old nature in them. I just have to take that old nature out of them. Of course he didn't. He said they're ruined, absolute wank off. The whole lot will have to go, the nice bits and the nasty bits as well. That old man born of Adam's stock, his past, his present, and his future are write off. Get rid of him, said God. And then in his boundless mercy, having got rid of us in the death of Christ. When he raised up Christ, he gave us, as a free gift, a new life, utterly unconditional, perfect, whole. When you were baptized, you were saying, yes, you accepted God's verdict, you were a complete write off. Not that some of you was good and some wasn't quite so good, but the whole lot of you was bad and you were finished. Your only hope now and for eternity is that God has given you free and for now And a new you lie life in in car. Christ.