Intro — Adam:
Well last week’s Shovel-Audio was entitled Do Not Let Sin Reign. Jim you did some reflecting upon your seeming lack of a dynamic testimony based upon your uncertainty as to when you were saved, and how that taught you more than you could have ever imagined regarding what it means to not let sin reign.

Jim:
Because I had compared myself with those whose salvation experience seemed larger than life, it left me wondering why I had no such story. It’s like watching James Bond escape serious injury and death hundreds of times in one movie to come out victorious at the end. It’s exciting … but it’s also intimidating when you realize how weak and pathetic your own life is. Somehow, Bond can jump or fall out of buildings and still get right back up, but I can fall off a ladder and be crippled for life. Well, many of the Christian testimonies I heard left me feeling comparably inadequate.
I mean, God was supposed to have been making me strong, and he was supposed to have been leading me through the same kind of amazing experiences I was hearing from those around me. You know what? It seemed that the spiritual Christians knew what God was doing, and that he was acting powerfully on their behalf. Me? I had to exaggerate the few experiences that seemed as if they had come from God in order to make it seem as if I was somewhat close.

Adam:
Hearing you talk about trying to live by comparing yourself to those around you reminds me of something Paul had written in Romans 14:22

The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves.

Jim, I grew up a very sensitive person. It has been implied most all my life that I am considered an “intuitive” person. All I know is that I can very easily pick up the attitudes, persona and feeling of just about anyone I am around. While that can be a good thing, I find it mostly a tough thing. For I end up taking on a lot of the things people never mean to let out of the bag.
For instance if someone were to have a religious attitude but, wanted to hide it under a self generated “niceness” I would pick up on it , feel it and it would weigh on me for that remainder of the day….etc….
What I find interesting about that that quote from Paul, is that it seems to imply that we need not have to be in bondage to ANYONE’S hang ups, religious expressions, obvious or not so obvious. That we are free from it. I have heard you say on more than one occasion that WE don’t necessarily have to go the same route just cuz others are. I think a lot of us though simply get worn down by it all..we can’t always have our “spiritual” dukes up and we often fall into the idea that we must protect ourselves from the influences, actions and mannerisms of the fleshly mind parading around with it’s rules. [be at peace with all men as best as it depends on you]-for we can not change the defiled mind but, we can only testify of God in the face of it’s demands.

Jim:
Spiritual dukes, you say? You know, I remember going through some of those protective stages. What I’ve learned through it all, though, is that I had overlooked the very real working of God in my own life. You see, I had been expecting God to make me strong in the same way that had appealed to my former perceptions of strength … and yes, I’m talking about fleshly perceptions. And somehow through it all, I began to realize how my own fleshly imagination of being strong in the Lord had played into how I thought I could keep sin from reigning in my mortal body. Trying to be strong in the Lord blinded me to the real power of God that had been working in me through my weakness

Adam:
Well Jim as we continue on with this audio series today (Regarding Choice: Help Me Help You!) I want to start out with reading a passage from the letter to the Romans okay? It’s here in Romans 6:19 and it says:

I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. Romans 6:19 NIV

Ha! So many times when I would read that last line — “so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness” — I would have this remote feeling of obligation mixed with confusion and doubt. As if this was something I could or should be doing. Not that I am saying that I’m not the one being used by God to bear fruit. For it was Christ who said: “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain..” I am just saying this appeared to me as something I needed to do or to create in my life. As if I was the one who had to engineer a lifestyle of holiness or try and be mindful of my every action and deed to accomplish a work of God in my life at all times. What though, is the difference between this and what we see in many in the world today?

Jim:
Adam, that’s an excellent question to consider! I mean, if our lives as Christians can be compared to other ways or methods of producing decent or good behavior … that just doesn’t seem to have anything to do with new life or the power of the resurrection. When it comes to how so many Christians have been taught to regard the matter of choice, it helps to realize that many of us have been trying to engineer a lifestyle of holiness.

Adam:
The cool thing though is when you look at this statement it reflects a “thing” that is ALREADY done. In other words, I don’t “offer” my members and then TRY to make them a slave of righteousness, rather it’s all based upon the truth that I AM a slave to righteousness! For it says:

“You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” Romans 6:18

Instead of my behaviors being controlled by law and sin, they are now leading to holiness. Meaning they are an outpouring of who and what I am, holy. I “offer” or present my members as holy to God because that is what they are. I don’t need to manufacture it, it is the reality of my life before God. [by His doing]

Jim:
Adam, I really appreciate you zooming right in on this because the implications of that which is already done in Christ most definitely lays the foundation for everything in our lives. As I mentioned in the last audio, I enrolled in a local Bible College shortly after having moved to Florida. Before that time, I had been familiar enough with the Bible so as to know where to find a few select books, and I knew there was a major division between the books of the Old Testament and the books of the New Testament, but I had never really studied it in any serious fashion. All of a sudden, here I was attending Bible classes starting at 7 in the morning … lasting until noon or so.
Learning Bible verses became a new way of life for me, and those verses became the rocks upon which I stood, and upon which I began to perceive myself and the world around me. And let me tell you, I didn’t venture too far from any of these faith-anchors that were being added to my arsenal on a daily basis. Adam, that verse from Romans that you opened up with was also one of the many that I had learned within my first or second semester. However, I memorized it from the Authorized Version, which, being King James English, made it sound a little more stilted … as well as a little more difficult to understand. Nevertheless, it was presented to me pretty much as you have described. I didn’t consider any other suggestion but that it was up to me to make this thing happen. Now it’s not as if we left God’s grace totally out of the picture because asking God to help us in this endeavor was often encouraged. Imagine my surprise to discover that asking God to help me to do what Jesus Christ had already done was an insult to the very spirit of grace! A surprise, yes, but a very welcomed surprise.

Adam:
Jim, is it possible that this was the very thing that the Hebrews were doing as described in the letter to the Hebrews?

Jim:
Most certainly, it is! And by the way, I am alluding to that verse in Hebrews that says,

How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? Hebrews 10:29

Now, if any of you are hearing this with the spirit of condemnation hanging over your head, it’s only because you’re trying to hold on to two radically different propositions at the same time. It’s like trying to travel east and west simultaneously. But trying to do the one while believing we are still doing the other is the very thing that leaves us confused and paralyzed. You see, asking God to help you to remove your sin is built upon the assumption that Jesus Christ hasn’t already done it.

Adam:
Jim that was absolutely potent..
But many Christians have been instructed in such a way that their prayers for help don’t come across as being denials of Christ’s payment for sin, but rather as a sincere desire [aka: fervent] from the heart in their quest to live the Christian life.

Jim:
Hey, I’m well aware of the Biblical or religious tricks that make it appear as if these prayers aren’t the bold-faced denials of Christ’s once-and-for-all sacrifice that they really are. Look, I’ve been there, and I know the fear that hid within the requests I made to God. And no, if you had asked me back then, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to put my finger on it for the longest time. Honestly, I probably would have questioned the very suggestion. But come on, do you think God is fooled by all our posturing? You see, this is pretty much the same ominous confusion those believing Jews found themselves in when they tried to justify a return to the familiar old-covenant sacrifices of bulls and goats as an aid in their new life.

Adam:
…as in something SEEN, something outward to perform

Jim:
Exactly! And by the way, don’t let it slip by unnoticed that they were doing all of it in “the name of Yeshua.” Yeah, they were fervently praying that God would accept those ineffective sacrifices in the name of the one who came to remove sin. How’s that for a total contradiction?

Adam:
So, where does that leave believers today in the midst of all this confusion and condemnation? I mean, what about the fear that verses like Hebrews 10:29 or Romans 6:19 stir up within so many Christians? How can we view any of these Biblical warnings as anything other than what they seem … which, to many of us, are direct demands from God that we need to make a choice to turn our lives around in the hope that we might be able to resist sin and to continue to choose to serve him in holiness until the end of our days?

Jim:
When the Christian life is viewed in that way, it is definitely a scary thing to stand before a God who judges so severely. But my friends, let me tell you how all of this is good news to us. You see, verses like those found in Hebrews or Romans should scare you! And no, I don’t mean that you should be afraid of God, but that you should recognize what it is to fear the kind of life demanded of you by those who would have you live under any shadow of the Law. For under the Law,

“it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Hebrews 10:31

Adam:
And that verse comes shortly after Hebrews 10:29, which would place it within the argument as to what happens to those who live under Law.

Jim:
Do we not see how letters like Romans and Hebrews are written in such a way as to shock believers out of any confidence that might be found in the law, which is to say, confidence that is found in their own fleshly efforts?

Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it. Hebrews 4:1

The author of Hebrews may have told the believers that by drawing near they could “find grace to help in time of need,” but he wasn’t suggesting that they should ask God to “Help me help you!” by removing the sin he had already taken out of the way by the sacrifice of his son. No! The grace that could help the Hebrews in time of need had to do with standing against the intimidation of those who were trying to pull them back into the same Law that was never able to cleanse their conscience from sin, nor that of their ancestors.
My friends, the Law is not the problem. It is holy and righteous and good … but it does what it had been designed to do, which was to make sin increase so that it could be seen in every possible area of human existence in those who tried to keep it. You see, the Law was not made for the righteous — that’s you and me in Christ — it was made for the sinners. And that’s not us.

Adam:
The fleshly mind does a marvelous job at bucking against this reality as it applies to our actual lives. Oh we are okay with having it be a “truth” that is somehow mentally acknowledged as an imaginary thing that has no real value in the here and now but, when it comes to this being an ongoing reality, there are nothing but objections coming our way.

Jim:
What kind of objections are you referring to?

Adam:
YOU CAN’T be holy, look at what you’ve done? You can’t be clean, you have to go GET clean first, then you can count that as true. And the list goes on. The fact is we ARE holy and it is THAT message that empowers us not, the condemnation we are so accustomed to hearing. It is the message that we REMAIN holy that carries such sanity of mind and self control that we lose when giving into law.

Jim:
And when you say “…that we REMAIN holy…” you’re not referring to some kind of human effort, are you?

Adam:
Not at all! Walking in freedom from the stain of sin as before God is an incomprehensible idea to the mind of the world. For they would have you fry before that truth could ever be reality. No, no, we must pay for it. We must work for it. We must strive for it. Free? Ha! No way. Maybe in word but, not in reality.

Jim:
To those who are of this world, holiness can only be defined by the very stain that occupies the center stage of their attention, the stain by which millions of religious, holiness-seekers identify themselves, the stain that has been targeted for removal by a multitude of self-defeating, double-minded efforts. You used the word, incomprehensible, and I have to say that it so well describes the inability of those who walk in bondage to understand what it means to walk in freedom. There is simply no way it can make sense.

Adam:
Jim, I have to ask, did you come to understand these distinctions about holiness through Paul’s statements in Romans?

Jim:
In view of how often I bring it out through Paul’s writings, it might be assumed that I first saw it there, but the truth is that I initially recognized it through John’s writings, specifically, right here:

“I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.” John 17:15-19

See the word sanctify? That’s the same Greek word that got translated as holy in other places in the Bible, and it means set apart. Anyhow, even though others used the same verses to establish their teachings as how to become sanctified, or holy, I saw a statement of reality in Jesus’ words. Perhaps it’s the fleshly assumption that Jesus referred to having sanctified himself by the things he did all along the way, but in view of how he was speaking to his father, he was talking about what he was doing through his upcoming death and resurrection. He was saying that his disciples would be sanctified, made holy, through the very same means. He had come to make a new thing!

Adam:
Jim, talk about the reality of our holiness as an ongoing thing.

Jim:
As stated in John 5:24, as well as throughout most of Paul’s letters, the reality of our holiness as an ongoing thing is found in as simple a truth as having passed from death to life or walking in newness of life. This is where we have been living since having first come to Christ … even if we have been struggling to understand what that could possibly mean. We need to reject the fleshly mindset of religious Christianity that would have us imagine that our degree of understanding or even our choice to do so determines whether or not we’re actually walking in newness of life. Do you know why that sounds so logical? It’s built upon the only truth that makes sense to the natural mind, which is what Solomon wrote thousands of years ago:

That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9

Well, I’m here to tell you that Jesus did what he did in order to confound the imagination of this world to make a totally new thing happen! We are holy! Everything the apostles encouraged the believers in at that time was built upon that amazing reality of grace that totally undid every perception they ever had. And if we were to reject the religious perceptions that have attached themselves to their messages, we would hear them telling us the very same thing: Stand firm in this new life that is Christ, and don’t let any human wisdom or effort convince you otherwise!

Adam:
Do you have any personal examples of how you ran into a contrary thought when in the grip of some day to day thing?

Jim:
I could probably offer you countless personal examples from any given period of time, if I got on a roll, that is, but let me give you something from my everyday experiences. For those of you who don’t know, I have worked at one of the world’s major retailers — a home-improvement center — which has brought me into constant contact with a lot of people for most every single day of my life for the last 21½ years. Let me tell you, many of these people are fully prepared to project their own frustrations and failures upon whoever they come in contact with. I’m talking about wrath of Biblical proportions!
Yeah, I’ve been the person many of these angry people have approached for more than 2 decades. You see, I’m one of the go-to guys in my store, which means I’m one of the employees that other employees bring their difficult customers to … and with some of those, I can feel their sore displeasure as I’m being approached. It can show itself in many different ways, but one of the more common is when the people who come asking for your help reject your advice based upon their superior knowledge of the very thing they don’t know how to do.
Hey, I’ve been verbally degraded so many times and in so many ways (most of it hidden behind a mask of righteousness) that I couldn’t even begin to count the insults. But I can tell you that any one of those confrontations can stir up a counter-measure on my end. You see, it’s right there that I’m tempted to stand upon my own righteousness because the truth is that I’m usually the one who is right. But you know what I’ve learned in the midst of all this? Being right isn’t the substance of the life that is in me. I won’t apologize for what I’ve learned about how things work in this life because knowing how things work is really good to know. It’s just that the world around me — especially the religious world — would have me stand upon it and identify myself by it.

Adam:
Jim, I can SO relate. Especially in view of the sanity of mind we know in Christ. For I can often see the set ups as they are happening and when it comes to fruition, I can just as easily be afraid that I might be weakened by not fighting back or protecting myself from hurt. The fact of the matter is that I am only weakened by standing in my OWN righteousness, not upon His. For His IS strengthening to us who are His. We have nothing to fear in standing on Him.
Jim, a believer might still be missing the joy of spirit that the passage in Romans 6 describes. What does righteousness and cleanliness before God have to do with a life of joy, peace or patience for us?

Jim:
The whole letter of Romans used to be more of a roller-coaster ride for me because of how I saw its ups and downs. Peace and joy seemed to be intertwined with fear and condemnation. And for me, the passage in Romans 6 was no exception because the individual Bible verses I had memorized that brought an amazing sense of victory were offset by others that kept me on my self-righteous toes. If, as believers, we find ourselves falling back upon the same perceptions of righteousness and cleanliness that we learned in this world, we will not find true joy in the reality of them that has been brought about in Christ. Oh, there’s no doubt we’ll get caught up in feelings of a temporary nature — but it’s the kind that’s experienced throughout this world when things seem to be going right. And it vanishes as soon as things go back to being not right.
The righteousness and cleanliness expressed by Paul in this letter refer to a life that is totally foreign to everything we had come to know of it. And let me tell you right here, this is not the weak and pathetic doctrinal excuse for righteousness or cleanliness, that is, it’s not something that has to be applied in order to make it real. No! It is the actual substance of who we have been made in Christ. Joy and peace are discovered from within ourselves when we reject the fleshly admonitions to stand before God by any other means than according to the confidence of Christ. This is the heart of true revelation, for this is where we see ourselves in Christ, as those who have been raised from the dead.

Adam:
How do we connect this to the reality of the fruits of flesh just “falling off”? How VITAL is this to the process of growing grace? In other words, what can we expect will happen to our joy when we are working for fruit that ‘results’ in righteousness or life?

Jim:
You know, there are times when sinful habits just fall off, but then, we’ll turn around and discover others that won’t go away. Like, what gives? And it’s right there that we often take heed to some religious wisdom that’s been cloaked in Biblical terms to help us understand what had happened at that time to made it work … and how we need to apply the actual thing we did to make it work again. And then, mixed into the troublesome things we’d actually like to see disappear, what if some of those things that we’ve been trying to get rid of are merely the religious preferences of some self-righteous leader? You see, the religious mind has us so screwed up that we’re giving God the credit for fleshly preferences while giving ourselves credit for God’s doing!
Some examples: graveclothes, band-aids, scabs.