Episode 32 - Benefits of the Cross - Pt2

Speaker 1 00:00:07 Hello, and welcome to the unveiling with your hosts. AJ mark, and Tim three guys discussing the one true gospel. We hope you enjoy today's discussion. Let's dive right in. Speaker 1 00:00:22 Hello and welcome to the unveiling with your hosts. AJ mark, and Tim. This is episode 32 and art episode title today is the benefits of the cross part two. And last week we talked about forgiveness and we talked about have inheriting the righteousness of Christ. So today we're gonna talk, take on a couple of more topics about what, what the Christ did for us at the cross, what we've, what we've received and, and how it affects us and how we move forward with our Christian life. I'm gonna start us off tonight, mark, with, uh, the end dwelling of the holy spirit. And that's a good one to play off of from last week, because last we talked last week, we talked about being forgiven and being given the righteousness of Christ. And I know many pastors who have taught that God cannot abide sin. So we couldn't, we couldn't have the spirit in us. If we were still sinful, we could only have the spirit in us if we were righteous. And that's a point in the church that I think a lot of people just don't understand very well because they'll one minute, they'll think they're in the favor of God and you know, he's with them in the next minute. Oh, they've done something to offend him and he's gone and that's no way to live. So mark, hopefully I haven't, haven't said too much. I'm gonna hand it over to you from here. Speaker 2 00:01:43 Sure. Well, the, when you were speaking that one of my FA and I was in this book today, uh, Ephesians one, which is one of my favorite chapters of the Bible, it's just an astounding and beautiful chapter. And the apostle Paul tells us that even before the beginning of creation, God had already chosen us in Christ to be who and blameless in his sight. Okay. So for, for that to be accomplished, Christ had to die for us. And that was already the part of his original PA plan, even before the beginning of the beginning. And, um, it's a good thing too, because of the forgiveness of sin and the fact that he has made us the righteousness of God, he's given us his righteousness. And as Martin Luther said, there is no other righteousness in existence. Other than the righteousness of God. It's a righteousness that is completely foreign to us from the moment we turn to Christ, we can work just sacrifice every minute of the rest of our lives. Speaker 2 00:02:54 And we're never gonna be more righteous than at that moment when we put our faith in the cross and he imparted his righteousness to us. So because of the fact that we are now the righteousness of God, that our sin has been removed, as far as the east is from the west, that he's chosen to forgive and forget our sins and lawless acts and that he will never put us to shame over them. Now God himself can come and take his residence in us. And if you read in the book of John between chapters 14 and 16, as Jesus is about to go to the cross, he starts to talk to his disciples and through them, to us telling us that. And he, he talks very, it's very mysterious, but he starts talking about he being in the father and the father being in him and he being in us. Speaker 2 00:03:50 And there's a communion that takes place because of the cross now, because of that forgiveness and that righteousness, we now, we can't get any closer to God he's in us. And we are in him. It's an intimate communion. It's the joy of life, really. And in fact, when we discussed the holy spirit, we talked about that. He is called the spirit of revelation, and Paul constantly prayed for the church that the spirit of wisdom and revelation would reveal God to us so that we might know him better. And so to me, that's one of the most valuable things that came out of the cross, that now we have communion with the God who created us, who loves us and who redeemed us at the cross. Speaker 3 00:04:39 I want to read a couple of scriptures that, uh, say exactly what mark is saying. That, you know, we received the holy spirit because of her forgiveness and righteousness. We actually read the scripture last time as well in acts chapter 10, from verse 43, Peter, uh, went to Cornelius house, right? And he was called by Cornelius. The angel appears to Cornelius and then basically tells him in a go call, Peter. And he will preach the gospel. So after that, Peter firstly hesitates, but finally he goes, and then he basically talks about the death bur and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is a gospel. And then he comes to this towards the end of it. He says in chapter 10, verse 43 of him, all the prophets bear witnessed that through this, through his name, everyone who believes in him will receive the forgiveness of sin while Peter was still speaking. Speaker 3 00:05:36 These words, the holy spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message. So here, the moment Peter talked about the forgiveness, they will receive through faith in Lord, Jesus Christ. Even as they heard the word in their heart, they believed, you know, I want you to see this. They did not do anything else except to believe that their sin are forgiven. You know, we think the forgiveness of, since it's a small matter and it's ABC of the gospel, but, you know, unless we believed in that forgiveness, we could not receive the holy spirit. So as they heard the message, the Bible says the holy spirit fell on them again. Similarly in acts chapter two, I think it towards, uh, I think it was 42, I guess. Yeah. Verse 37. Again, Peter, this is a first gospel, right? He talks about the death bur and resurrection of Lord Jesus Christ. Speaker 3 00:06:31 And in verse 37. And when they heard this, they were peers to their heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles brother, and what shall we do, Peter said to them, repent. And each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, further forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the holy spirit. So for us, like mark is saying, in order to receive the holy spirit, we, our sins must be first forgiven. And all we need to do is because of the work of law, Jesus crush, because of it shut blood Bible says without the shutting of blood, there is no remission of sin. So we know that the Lord, Jesus Christ shut is blood for the forgiveness of our sins. So the moment anyone believes that their sins are forgiven because of the shed blood, they will receive the holy spirit, how awesome that is. There's nothing else for us to do. Speaker 2 00:07:27 Yeah. I love those two verses how they both tie forgiveness and the giving of the spirit almost simultaneously together. Yeah. That's all. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:07:38 You know, uh, you said that this holy spirit came upon them. And I think one of the big things about the entire being righteousness, you know, being the righteousness of God and forgiven is the spirit now dwells in us up until the cross, the spirit never came and dwelled in us. He would, he would come on us. Uh, he would be around, you know, he was the wind in, in creation, this, that, and the other, there were various depictions of him, but never as, uh, a being living inside of us and giving us his nature. Mark, I think you had, you were the one that brought that one up. I liked to that point. Speaker 2 00:08:16 Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You can search yourself through the old, old Testament. Every time the spirit came, it was a visitation. It was not a permanent home, which from the cross on the moment, a human being believes in the forgiveness that Christ purchased as those two scriptures that AJ said, boom, the spirit of God comes to dwell in you. And it's also interesting though, that before we come to Christ, the spirit has already visited us because he's the one that draws us to the cross in the first place. And then the moment we understand and hear and receive boom right into us. That's awesome, man. Speaker 3 00:08:59 Yeah. In fact, to your point, mark, the whole Testament, if you look at the temple, right? So it had three, uh, partitions, if you will, there was outer coats and the holy place and the holy of Holies, no one could go, you know, that is the presence of God. The moment anyone went into the holy of Holies, they were basically dead, right? The only time the priest would go is on the day of atonement and that too, not without blood. And in fact, he's going inside to sprinkle the blood, uh, in front of the, um, arc on top of the arc, I think between the ch BIS so that, you know, our sins are covered for that whole year. So again, tying back to the forgiveness, the priests could not go into the holy of holy is because the sacrifices of bulls and gods, they could not take away our sins. Speaker 3 00:09:54 They were only covering, right. They were only a shadow of things to come. So because in the old Testament, those SAC, those sacrifices did not take away our sin. Nobody could enter into the holy hoes, but when the Lord Jesus Christ died, right. You know, the curtain was to, into two. The curtain that is in front of the holy of Holies was ton into two. That means indicating that, you know, now we can, not only, we can go freely into the holy of Holies, but the Lord himself can come out of the holy of Holies and have communion and fellowship with the you and me. And now in the new Testament, it's not that Lord dwelling in the holy of Holies he's actually come. He was like, he was free to come outside. The curtain is to, and he is happy to come outside and to dwell inside you and me now we become the temple of God. Speaker 1 00:10:48 The picture of that. And the Bible says that the veil was rent from top to bottom, which indicates to me this wasn't done by humans from bottom up, but that God literally reached down and tore the veil away. Yeah. So that we could have that intimate communion. Speaker 2 00:11:06 And there's, there's a scripture. I don't have it with me now that just popped in my head that says that veil, that curtain that was torn was Christ's body. Speaker 3 00:11:16 Yeah. It's inhibitors. Speaker 2 00:11:18 Yeah. So in other words of we were separated from God and Christ gave his own body to be torn, removing that distance between us and God. How awesome is that? OK, Lord. Speaker 3 00:11:33 Yeah. And in fact, it's, uh, as though like, you know, God could not wait to come and, uh, meet with us and well, in, in us, the moment the work is finished, he tore it and then he walked outside, you know, it's so cool. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:11:50 It's like having a family member that you haven't seen in a year and they're, you're waiting for, 'em in the airport and they're they're landing and you're just waiting and the minute they get off the plane, you get that reunion. I just reminded you that. Yeah, that is awesome. And that's so cool. Yeah. And, and in Ephesians one today, it also said that Christ being sacrificed for us to accomplish these things was according to God's will and pleasure. It was his pleasure to bring this about now. It was obviously a great cost to him, the life of Jesus Christ, but the depth of his love and what got accomplished, uh, like, like it says for the joy set before him, you know, that, that's just awesome to think about. Speaker 1 00:12:41 So now that we have the indwelling of the holy spirit and we've been grafted into the vine of Christianity, uh, I, I want to kind of touch on another point and that is, we are literally family members. Now we are, we are co-heirs with Christ, which makes us the sons of God. And so we have a whole bunch of inheritance and things like that, that we receive as a result of that. Mark, uh, why don't you start us off on this? Speaker 2 00:13:13 Sure. Well, we've talked about this quite a bit and it's been a theme in my life this year. In fact, I just wrote a song called sons and daughters from Galatians four, that talks about how far God has brought us in Christ from being slaves to the law and therefore slaves to sin, to being children of God, sons and daughters. And even more than that errors of God and coheres with Christ we're we, we didn't do this on purpose, but it seems like one thing is leading to another Christ died on the cross. We received forgiveness of sins and righteousness, and then immediately the spirit comes to live in us. And I just encourage everybody to go back and listen to our multipart series on the holy spirit. We don't wanna repeat that the amount of inheritance and blessing that comes from us, having the spirit in us now, it's just, we we're gonna really spend the rest of our lives, moving into that. Speaker 2 00:14:19 And you know, learning more deeply what that means to us, but one of those things, uh, and it says through the spirit, it says here, the spirit, you, this is Romans eight, 15 through 17. The spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear. Again, rather the spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship and by him, we cry ABA father that's daddy father, the spirit himself testified testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. Wow. You can't say it much better than that. Could you, and just, just a key there about receiving the spirit and what it's brought us, you know, making us sons of the living God, what a relationship to that is, huh? So many people feel, God is far off. Speaker 2 00:15:18 They're afraid of him. He's an angry grandfather. He hates them. He hates their sin. He's raffle, but that's not the that's not even true before you come to Christ. I mean, we do have a SIM problem and without Christ, we've got a very big problem. But the point is, it's his great love for mankind that caused him to send Christ for us. So the fact that he's now brought us from enemies of the cross, dead in transgression without God and without hope in the world, slaves to the law and slaves to, to sin and made us the children of God, sons and daughters and HES of his man. That's awesome. I can using the word, but that's the only word I can think of that destroys it. Speaker 1 00:16:05 Let me just interject real fast, AJ. Cause I know you got something you want to add to that. Romans eight, 14 was a verse I had in the back of my head and I managed to just pull it up for as many as are led by the spirit of God. These are sons of God. Speaker 3 00:16:22 Yep. Yep. That's awesome. Yeah. I was just going to add a couple of more scriptures that, uh, tell us plainly when we receive the spirit of God, we become the children of God. Uh, Lord Jesus speaking. TOAs in J John chapter three. I am going to read from, um, verse, uh, five, right? So Jesus said truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God that which is born of the flesh is flesh. And that which is born of the spirit is spirit. So here, the term that is used is being born again, right? You know, what are we being born again? We are born again by the spirit of God. You know, when we are born again by the spirit of God, what does it mean? We become the children of God. Speaker 3 00:17:13 Again, you know, in John chapter one, verse 12, this is also a very, very well known scripture, right? It says, but as many as received him to him, he gave the right to become the children of God. Even to those who believe in his name, who were born, not of blood, not of the will of flesh, not of the will of man, but of God. So, you know, connecting these two right before we said, whatever is born of the flesh is flesh. Whatever is born of the spirit is spirit. And here it says, you know, whoever believes in the Lord, Jesus Christ is born of God. And again, it says not born of the will of the flesh, right? That is not born of the flesh, but born of God, you know, which is being born again by the spirit of God. So again, in the mark, you said right in the sequence of things, right. When we fell, we all became sinners, right? And we were separated from God and from his life. And then we were dead in our sin and masses, right? And then our Lord, Jesus Christ died on the cross and he brought forgiveness of our sin. He took away our sin and he brought forgiveness. And the effect of that forgiveness is we receive the holy spirit. And when we receive the holy spirit, we become the children of God. And in fact, we are being born of God through the holy spirit. Speaker 2 00:18:38 What was the scripture address again, AJ that you just read? Speaker 3 00:18:42 Uh, I read, uh, John one 12 and also John three. Okay. So yeah, John one 12, but as many has received him to them, he gave the right to become the children of God. Even to those who believe in his name who were born of not of blood, not of the will of flesh, not of the will of man, but of God. Speaker 2 00:19:03 Here's a great sister verse, uh, kind of couple with that verse. It says, but when the set time had fully come, God sent his son born of a woman born under the law to redeem those under the law that we might receive adoption to sonship because you are his sons. God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out Abba father. So you, you are no longer a slave, but God's child. And since you are, as child, God has made you also in air. That's another scripture that brings in our inheritance that we are now, heir is Romans eight. Was that other one I had read? So, so many of these scriptures, this was obviously not some fringe teaching of Paul's. This was something that he hammers home through. So many of his letters to the church, this is like key key stuff. Not, it's not fringe theology. You know, the stuff we're bringing here was a main, main theme of the apostle Paul's gospel. Speaker 1 00:20:13 And let's remember that this was all being preached mostly to the Jewish people. Uh, I know Paul was off to the Gentiles and all, but the reason why this was so important to be described in the way it is, is as in the familial relationship is because in the Jewish tradition, the, uh, inheritance, uh, from father to son is extremely important. And you know, it, whether you're the first son or the second son and, you know, things like that. So this was something that resonated very well with them. And so, I mean, that's probably why this particular picture of the relationship is painted in the way it is. Speaker 3 00:20:56 Yeah. In fact, in the logical sequence of things, um, uh, mark, you just mentioned a right, you know, in the scripture that you, um, uh, that you just read, you know, somebody cannot be an aide unless there a son. And if there a sun, unless some exception happens, right. They automatically receive the inheritance. So I am an aide of my dad's inheritance because I'm a son. So again, going back to the logical sequence, right, because of the holy spirit, we've become the sons of God. And because of our sonship, we have the inheritance from God and that inheritance is UN searchable. That's what the Bible says. Right? And all the things that we talk about on this podcast is mostly, you know, the, what is the inheritance that we received as a children of God? Speaker 1 00:21:45 Yeah. And this, by the way is not, uh, this is not gender specific. When he, when he speaks of sons of God, this is inclusive of women and, and men. So I wanted to make that clear before someone called us out. Speaker 2 00:22:00 You know, I had alluded to Ephesians one earlier and I wanted to read the whole thing in context here. Um, there's multiple points we've been talking about within this one little two sentence line. It says for, he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight in love. He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. Speaker 1 00:22:36 Amen. Speaker 3 00:22:37 Yeah. In fact, uh, if you go further in the same chapter in verse 11, it says also we have obtained an inheritance, having been pretty. And according to the purpose who works all things after the council of his will, Speaker 2 00:22:53 First John three says, see what great love the father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are. It's like the ultimate lavishing of love that God made us, his children through the cross. Speaker 3 00:23:10 In fact, I think we somehow, you know, we are taught to pray our father in heaven, right? Dear father. And then we end with Jesus name. Somehow we lost the awesomeness of our sonship, right? We are looking for things from God. We are looking for this, that benefits and health and whatever right. Riches and all that. But you know, we are already sense of God. I feel like, you know, it doesn't hit us that much, but you know, we are the children of God because of the finished work of our Lord, Jesus Christ. We are the children of God. And if we have, we fear children, all the things that we ask God for are big God for are, they're already there because that is all right. The Bible says, if God gave us a son freely, right? How can he also not give us all things freely? Speaker 3 00:24:01 So I think we need to stop and actually think about this, that we are the children of the most eye. And we are the sons of the living God, and nothing can separate us from God. And we start thanking God and start cherishing our sonship. Our, you know, us being the children of God. When we say sonship, we are not talking about just men here. But again, I think there is a point that Tim made in Roman culture. Sonship has a specific significance. You have all the rights to the, to what father has, how the father's inheritance. That is a reason that word is specifically used. Because again, in the Roman culture, I think there's a difference between a son and a children and children. Um, typically if somebody has more children, at some point, I think after they are grown after 14 years or 15 years, they chose choose one of them as their son or the, a moving forward. And he gets to take the name of the father and also the responsibility of the family. So that is the reason the word son is used. You know, sometimes we try to be too nice and, uh, maybe replace some other words, but we are also losing the awesomeness of what, uh, you know, God is communicating to us. So what it means is whether you're male or female, you're the son of God. That means you receive all the rights that we get as a son, Speaker 2 00:25:33 You brought up a great, great point there. And I don't mean to be critical. You know, you were talking about Christians praying in a certain way. And I just hit me recently. And I think I actually kinda tongue in cheek. I, I hope you took it in the spirit. It was given, but sometimes we're constantly praying for things that we've already, we already have. Like you said, it's our right. We have the right to be called children of God. Imagine a dad is gonna send you off. I'll just use, send you off to war. He puts armor on you. He gives you a sword. He gives you food. And wa he gives you everything you need. And as you're about to go, you start, you get on your knees and you say, father, please give me a sword. Please give me arm, or please give me water and food. Speaker 2 00:26:25 I wonder if God, you ever gets tired of us asking things. He's already lavished us with that are already ours. Like you said, that we don't, we don't have, we don't realize enough who we are, whose we are and the gifts, what we, we have the power, we have the resurrection power we have, you know? And so AJ asked for prayer as he goes on an overseas, uh, business trip. And I just kind of say to him, why are you asking me to pray for things that are already years and abundance? And then I just prayed after that, that those things would just explode from AJ as he's there. The grace of God would explode for him. But it's just like you had brought it up. That's the only reason I'm bringing up. How, how sometimes we ask for things that we don't realize, Hey, you know, it's like praying father make me a child of God. Oh, wait a minute. You're already are a child. Give me your grace, Lord, what do you mean? Give you your grace. I gave you Christ. I gave you Christ. You know, we already have so much just to learn, to walk in that, to walk in what we already have to me. That would, that's where I want to get to. I'm not there either. Believe me, you know, that's what one of those discussions on the availing are always about moving deeper. Speaker 1 00:27:48 It is specifically because of that sentiment, mark, where I have found myself in the past, praying for what I know are already the promises of God, where I no longer ask for those things. But rather thank God for those things. It's not to remind God of his promises. I've heard that one from the, from the pulpit. I don't like that, that expression, I Speaker 2 00:28:10 Don't either, Speaker 1 00:28:11 But it is, it is more or less, uh, to help that in my mind and body and spirit to accept it, say thank you, Lord, that you have given me health. And thank you, Lord, that you have given me wisdom. And thank you that I have safety and travel and things like that. It it's for me, not for God. Speaker 2 00:28:30 Right? That's true. Yeah. That's good. Speaker 3 00:28:33 Yeah, that's exactly right, Tim. Uh, I also find myself thanking God for, um, what I have rather than begging God for giving me something. In fact, prayer is, you know, most of the time, even in the, uh, Bible, it is an exercise of faith, right? You know, we, through prayer, prayer, we receive our inheritance because as long as we live in this world, right, you know, we can live by our flesh or we can live by the promises of God. And prayer is a means of exercising our faith to receive what is already ever sin. Christed Speaker 2 00:29:07 Great way of putting that. Speaker 1 00:29:09 You know, we're not close to the end yet, but there is one more thing I think I'd like to talk about. Uh, if you guys don't mind moving on to the, kind of the, the further topic in this and that is now that the spirit is dwelling in us, he's changing us, he's working on us. And we can see that because, because the spirit produces fruit and I don't want to get into a really long discussion about this because we do have an episode. I believe it was number 28, where we talked about the fruit of the spirit, but the, the mere fact that the spirit dwells in us changes who we are basically from sinful to righteous. We're going to start walking in and producing this fruit and AJ I've been picking on mark to start these topics. Um, why don't you take us from here for a minute? Speaker 3 00:30:04 Yeah, sure. Tim, uh, I think it is in Galatians chapter five. Right? So let go there real quick. So, uh, before getting into the fruit of the spirit, I just wanted to mention that the fruit of the spirit is same as the fruit of righteousness or the fruits of righteousness. So, one thing I wanted to point is since it is a fruit of our righteousness, unless we realize that we are, um, the righteousness of God in Christ, unless we constantly realize believe and own our righteousness, we won't be able to bear this fruit. So it's very important, right? You know, sometimes people think we bear the fruit of the spirit by beating ourselves up for the sins, you know, constantly going back and beating ourselves up. So we will never bear fruit like that because the fruit of the spirit is also the fruit of righteousness. Speaker 3 00:30:58 So the Bible clearly says in, um, Romans five, 17 day that receive the gift of righteousness will reign in life. When we are reign in life, of course we will also bear the fruit of the spirit. So I think it is very important to understand that we bear the fruit of the spirit through the gift of righteousness. And we also, we discuss this several times before we can bear the fruit of the spirit we get out of the law, right? So we are no longer under the law, but under grace. So we also bear the fruit of the spirit, not by the law, but by grace. So I think it's very important to understand, because we kind of, it's easy to ignore everything and go back and, you know, look at our life and say, yeah, you know, my life is not where it ought to be. Speaker 3 00:31:45 And then you start trying to bear the fruit of the spirit. You don't try to bear the fruit of the spirit, but you rest in what Christ did for us. We rested in his finished work. We rested in our righteousness. And then we rested in the fact that we are no longer under the law, but under grace, then we bear the fruit of the spirit, right? So it says, but I say to you walk by the spirit and you'll not carry the desires of the flesh. So I think the key word here is walk by the spirit. And many of it define as you know, walking by the spirit is same as you know, trying to obey the law and trying to keep some commandments or trying to keep the commandments in your strength that, uh, the spirit is telling you, right? It all becomes an obedience to the spirit. Speaker 3 00:32:31 Okay. Spirit is telling me this. Then I have to obey in my own strength. Again, they're falling back to their flesh, but I, but Bible is clear, right? You know, walking by the spirit is same as walking in grace. How do you walk by the spirit? You basically understand the finish work of Christ. You first acknowledge that the largest Christ finished our, the everything, right. The work is finished. And then we received the forgiveness of sins. And then we also continue to see ourselves on a daily basis on a moment by moment basis as righteous, because God is constantly imputing righteousness to us. He's not imputing sin to us. That's when you know, in that rest, we abide in the Lord, Jesus Christ. And then that's when we begin to bear the fruit of the spirit. And here we see the fruit of the spirit, right in verse 22. But the fruit of the spirit is love joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. Self-control against such. There is no law. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So basically it's saying that, you know, the old man is crucified on the cross and the new man, you know, we are made alive in Christ. And as we rushed in the spirit, we will bear all this fruit. Speaker 2 00:33:51 What you're talking about, AJ, there is transformation coming from be being the old man to the new man. Um, when you think about it, like the work of the spirit is to transform us into the image of Christ. Sec Corinthians chapter three verse 18 tells us that, that as we rest in Christ, rest in his finish work, rid ourselves of the old mentality of the works of the law and us adding our good deeds and contemplate the cross and the glory of the Lord. He transforms us into the image. And then Paul takes the time who says, he says, all this is from the Lord, who is the spirit. So when you think about the verse, you just read, the fruits of the spirit are just the work of transformation of the spirit. It says that our flesh with all its passions and desires have been crucified with Christ on the cross. And now the spirit is transforming us into the image of Christ and love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, Genesis, and self control. Those are the image of Christ. Those are his qualities. So I just worked a way of thinking of the fruits of the spirit as being the transformation that the Spirit's giving us into the image of Christ. Speaker 1 00:35:18 And I'd like to point out here that those are those things aren't coming from me. They're, they're coming from the spirit that's dwelling inside of me. If you wanna see that I don't have forbearance or long suffering, just put me in traffic where I've been cut off for the third or fourth time where I'm behind a guy doing 20 miles under the speed limit. Uh, I, I don't have the patience or long suffering or for parents, but I find myself now, even though I will still be somewhat frustrated initially that it washes away fast. And I'm just, I'm I'm I have peace, even though I'm not necessarily happy, you know what I mean? And it's not coming from me cuz I don't have that in my flesh. Yeah. That's coming from the end dwelling spirit in me. Speaker 3 00:36:06 Yeah. In fact, I want to clarify one thing, uh, if I may, uh, uh, Tim, uh, so of course, you know, when you say I, you are ING to your flesh, right? There's nothing good in our flesh. Yes. But the Bible also says, uh, if any man is in Christ, he's a new creation. All things are passed in all things are become new. So what the spirit does is basically takes our new man and manifest our new man that is in Christ in us. And our part is not to try hard, but as we rushed in the finish work, and as we believe that we are made a new creation in Christ and as we beholds glory, like, uh, mark said beholding the glory of our largest Christ, the spirit will bring the new man into existence. So to speak in our day to day life. And the old man will stay, remain on the cross and we will start more and more living by our new man, which is our largest Christ himself. Speaker 2 00:37:04 Yeah. That's a key point. And the word trying is kind of a funky word when you think about it, because the moment we start to try, we're just getting in the way, you know, and that's one of the, I think that's one of the dangers of lists cuz when we read this list of the fruits of the spirit, what do we do? We start to evaluate ourself and see which ones we need to try harder to have in our lives, where it's much more effortless than that. It's us resting in Christ, resting in the cross. It's by faith from first to last it's, it's so easy that it's not intuitive for some people. We just make Christ the focus of our life as we walk through it and his spirit, which he's already given us is going to bring those things in us. So was that you behind me the other day when I was doing 20, under the limit, Tim Speaker 1 00:37:57 <laugh>, Speaker 2 00:38:00 As we're coming to the close of this episode, I just found it very interesting and it was not planned by us. Um, just how we've had one thing lead into another, through these two episodes in a row. And we're not saying this is the order anybody has to adhere to, but it's just interesting how the cross brought us forgiveness and righteousness, which brought us the indwelling of the spirit, which brought us into the adoption of sonship, which then brought us into the, the transformation and the fruits of the spirit. It's just like a, a flowing <laugh>, you know, streams, a living water just flowing out of each other. It's great stuff. Speaker 3 00:38:46 Yep. Speaker 1 00:38:47 Amen mark. Thank you very much for putting all of that together, AJ. Uh, since Mark's already done his usual wrap up, why don't, uh, I'll let you have a chance for a few final words on this episode before we close out. Speaker 3 00:39:00 Yeah. I would say, you know, in the old Testament, um, God was had many names, right? El Shaha ELO him and uh, almighty, you know, there are so many names, but in the new Testament, the name that the Lord Jesus Christ came to reveal as of God revealed to us of God, is the name father. So that is a thing that Lord Jesus Christ actually came to reveal because in the old Testament, they seldom referred to God as father. But as soon as the Lord, Jesus Christ came, you know, even starting with the Matthew five, he started referring to God as a father. So that is a name that he came to reveal to us of God. So I would say, you know, this is something we need to, uh, let this thing sink in that we are the sons of God and daily live by this. You know, as much as we live by the fact that our sins are forgiven and we are righteousness of God in Christ, we also need to live by this truth, that we are the sons of the most high God. And that is a done deal. And it's a fact, you know, a revocable fact that we need to understand and let it sink in and live by the truth daily that we are the sons of the most shy. Speaker 1 00:40:20 Excellent. AJ, thank you very much. And I think I'm gonna add a wrapped point today and that is mark. You brought up the word ABA in, in the Jewish language, uh, to translate that into English, the closest translation would be daddy and a father. You know, we may call him father and be formal with him, but he loves us so much. He wants to be our daddy and he wants to have that close relationship with us. He's chased us and he's brought us into his own and he loves us quit looking at the idea that there's a angry God up there with a clipboard keeping track of all the things you do wrong. It doesn't happen. We, we live in the love of ABA. Well, that's gonna wrap us for today and we appreciate everybody listening to us. We hope that you'll consider subscribing on whatever podcast platform you use and sharing us with your friends. And we look forward to talking to you again. The next time we would like to thank you for listening to the unveiling. We hope you have enjoyed it enough to consider subscribing and sharing with others. We welcome your questions, comments, and feedback. You can reach us via email at the unveiled gospel, yahoo.com or find our Facebook page at the unveiling podcast for AJ, mark and myself. God bless. And we will talk with you next time.