Repentance and Forgiveness

I enjoyed that. That comes across so different than the version we used to have in the hymnal. Well, of course it's different, it's a soloist, but there's something about that guitar. I love the piano, but some songs are just made for guitar, I think, and that might be one of them. Well, brethren, moving into this, I want to ask a pretty pointed question. I've got a series of questions to sort of focus the subject for today. Are you qualified to be in God's kingdom right now? Now, most of us would hesitate on answering that. We might say something, Well, I'm not perfect. I have things to work on, I know, or things I am working on.

And that's natural. Of course, any of us would have a degree of humility. I can't picture anybody standing up when I ask that and saying, Yes, I'm perfect. I have achieved the goal. And I biased the question a little.

I use that word qualified. Generally, that means meeting some designated standard or beating competition, such as in the Olympics they have qualifying races or heats. And if you win that, then you qualify to go in the final race. And we hesitate to think that there's ever anything we can do to qualify to be in God's kingdom. Maybe if I ask it in a different way. I mean, slightly different. If for some reason your life unexpectedly came to an end tonight, would you expect to rise in the first resurrection in God's kingdom?

That doesn't seem quite as pointed. Most of us would say, well, I hope so. Again, no one's probably going to say, Yes, I'm absolutely positive. But let's think in a little more theoretical terms. Imagine someone being baptized. And many of us have been through this. And by the way, I'll make a lot of references to that today. I know we have many here who are not baptized.

But you can think of some of the points I'm making today for future reference. But after baptism, right after someone's baptized, they come up out of the water and an administrator lays hands on them and asks for them to have God's spirit. Imagine if some freak accident happened, say lightning struck, or a nuclear bomb went off over the city, and life ended right then.

Would that person come up in the first resurrection? Well, most of us probably say, well, it all seems to fit. Theoretically, their sins have been forgiven, they've been repentant, they have the Holy Spirit. It doesn't seem so hard then. If you think back to your own baptism, for many of us, that was many years ago, okay, think all the way back to then and then to now. Have you become more qualified to be in God's kingdom over those years?

Do you have more character? Do you understand God's way of life more? Well, almost certainly yes. But then again, have you sinned since then? Once again, the answer is almost certainly yes. And that's where I'm leading up to this. We might assume that until we achieve a life with no sinning whatsoever, God's kingdom and eternal life are out of reach. We have no hope. And then I ask, well, pertaining to that, is that what the Apostle Paul was talking about then when he discussed the proper attitude of taking a Passover and he said, let a man examine himself?

I'm going to move this a little aside. I'm afraid I'm going to bump into it. I ask this because looking at that theoretical situation about baptism, another way we might look at it is if for some reason, say, the same type of freak accident happened right after you took the Passover, would you be sure then of being the first resurrection? I admit there is something special about that.

You focused very closely on repentance and you celebrated the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and commemorated that. And if you're like me, you have that tingly feeling. There's something after having your feet washed. I always walk back feeling. It's a physical feeling, but we know what we're thinking about and focusing on represents something much more important.

I wanted to pose these questions to help us prepare to talk about the concepts of sin and repentance, of forgiveness, of grace and redemption. I chose those words on purpose, but it sounds like I'm just listing every religious word I can think of. But this is the time of year where it's customary for Christians to undergo a process of examining themselves in the weeks leading up to Passover.

Mr. Warren and I are obviously thinking along the same lines. That's not a bad thing. We'll be hearing more about these things. I was shocked, Mr. Warren. I don't think you read a single scripture that I plan to turn to. I thought that would be unavoidable on your subject matter. So we're fitting together like puzzle pieces, I think. But I will say this. When I was younger, I used to dread this type of sermon.

And some of you might have been like me. They seemed to come every time of year. And even before I was baptized, I think I felt that way. And looking back, I'm not sure was it because they were such heavy, somber messages? Or, more likely, perhaps I was misunderstanding some of what was in those messages. Because I used to come to this time of year and hear the sermons about examining yourself. I was under an obligation to scrutinize my life and work up feelings of self-loathing, complete wretchedness.

If I didn't feel horrible and wicked after this examination, I must not be doing it right. So let's turn to the Scriptures in question. 1 Corinthians 11. And I don't want to deny, if you look at your life and it's horrible and wretched, then there's nothing here. You should feel horrible and wretched, but that's not the goal and purpose here.

1 Corinthians 11 will begin in verse 28. So I'm breaking in part of the thought here. Here's the instruction. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.

Now, if you're using the original King James Version, it said, He who eats and drinks unworthily, and it says, eats and drinks damnation. That sounds a lot more serious. It is serious no matter what. And if you're like me, you've probably heard this passage explained in one of a couple of different ways, and I want to briefly touch on both of them.

But the first is, as I've just been describing, that we need to scrutinize ourselves in advance of Passover so that we can come before God in a worthy manner. The New King James does interpret it more correctly. It's not that we are worthy. We're never worthy to come in God's presence in and of ourselves, but we come in a respectful manner knowing that our sins can be covered. But there's a second way of looking at this, where we look at the context of this admonition that the Apostle Paul made, and realize that he was not necessarily talking about searching our lives for hidden sin, but he was talking about the disrespectful way that some of the brethren in the Corinth congregation were keeping the Passover.

We can see that if we back up to starting in verse 20. We'll see more of what he was talking about here. He says, Therefore, when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord's supper.

It strikes me as funny as many Christian churches call it the Lord's supper. And here in Scripture, it's not the Lord's supper as in meal, like eating supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others. One is hungry, and another is drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the Church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I don't praise you.

This goes to show that they were making the Passover ceremony a meal, some eating to excess while others were in want. And Paul's saying, that's not good! Then Paul proceeds to tell them the instructions that Jesus personally gave him for keeping the Passover ceremony. Although he doesn't say exactly where and when. In the Bible, Paul says that he went into the wilderness for about three years, and we believe Jesus Christ taught him to some degree personally. So let's go on in verse 23.

Now we do this once a year. We say as often as you do it, we do it on the anniversary of Jesus Christ giving himself as a sacrifice. Well, actually the anniversary of him giving the symbols, and we know it was during that same 24-hour period he was sacrificed. So we keep it on the day of Passover, thus fulfilling the instruction that God gave the ancient Israelites in Exodus 12, where he said, keep this day for a perpetual anniversary, but we keep it with new symbols.

That struck me as I looked at my notes earlier. I'm calling them new, even though they're 2,000 years old, but compared to the 4,000-year-old way of doing it before they're new. We know that the broken bread symbolizes Christ's body, which was broken, and the wine symbolizes his blood, was bled out so that he could give his life for our sins. When we know the deep meaning of the ceremony, for anybody to participate in it in a careless or flippant or in any way disrespectful manner would be offensive, both to God and to our brethren. That's why Paul continues in verse 27, Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. If I were to put it in modern vernacular, you could say, he's saying, Check yourself! Don't take this lightly! Show some respect! For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this reason many are sick, or many are weak, and sick among you, and many sleep. I've heard a couple of different explanations to that combination of verses, and I think both of them are plausible and both are worth us knowing, so I wanted to focus on that momentarily.

First, someone who is being careless and unworthy and is not realizing that the bread symbolizes Jesus Christ's body, that was broken for us. And we know from 1 Peter 2, 24, that by his stripes we're healed. And I try to mention that whenever I anoint someone, although there's not a requirement of exactly how you pray, but we know we were healed by his stripes. So those who disrespect Christ's sacrifice of his body may not be healed. And so Paul said that some were weak and sick.

Now, I should put an interjection, of course. There are reasons that people get sick that have nothing to do with sin, and God heals in his own time, so, you know, I don't want anybody to jump to the conclusion that if someone's not healed immediately, that they must be doing something wrong. There's various, many different ways. But that could be a possibility, so that's not out of the realm of possibility. But there's another way to see this. That is, when someone has taken the Passover in an unworthy manner and not discerning the Lord's body, that's referring to the Church.

Across the page in my Bible, here in 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 27, it says, You are the body of Christ and members individually. Likewise, I'm not going to turn there, but Colossians 1, 18, Paul wrote that, Christ is the head of the body, the Church. So that's an important distinction. In 1 Corinthians 11, this whole chapter, Paul is correcting the members of the congregation for being disrespectful and calloused towards one another.

Some were coming to the Passover and gorging themselves, while others were going hungry right there in front of them. They weren't properly discerning just who these people around them were. They were the body of Christ. And for that reason, perhaps some of them were being punished. Now, we can interpret, as I said, that Scripture either way, but whichever way Paul meant it, he was telling the members of the Corinthian congregation to correct themselves, to avoid having to be judged and corrected by someone else, namely by God, as it says in verse 31.

If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord that we may not be condemned with the world. I like that. When we're chastened, it's so that we won't be condemned. And we're chastened for our own good, even though it doesn't feel good at the time. Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.

If anyone's hungry, let him eat at home, lest you come together for judgment. And the rest all said and ordered when I come. So Passover for us now is not kept as a meal, as it was for the ancient Israelites. Now, it's a solemn ceremony. On a solemn occasion, one that we're commanded to keep. All baptized members are to be there. But when we come together, we need to check ourselves.

Make sure that we are coming in a respectful way before God and our brethren. Now, to do that wouldn't necessarily take weeks ahead of time of self-scrutinization. Perhaps not even days. But does that mean there's no need to even examine ourselves? To look for our sin and how we're living? I don't necessarily think it means that. As I said, you could interpret Paul's writing both of those ways, and I think both are correct to some degree.

Now, he doesn't give a strict command as, with the days of unleavened bread, by the first day, the leavens to be out of your house. And for seven days, you don't eat leavening, you eat unleavened bread. So Paul didn't say, starting exactly four weeks before Passover, you do this much self-examination each day. It's not laid out like that. But as we, you know, it's a good thing for us to do. That time of year, and perhaps more often, we ought to always be looking in the mirror and say, how am I doing? And we might think about our progress and our growth as Christians.

And as we do that, we can come back to those questions that I asked at the beginning of the sermon. Are you qualified for eternal life right now? And if not, why not? Or if you are, do you understand why? And I'm going to address those questions more as we go along, but looking ahead, are you going to be ready for the first resurrection? Now, you might think, are you ready right after you take that sip of Passover wine?

And I asked that because I have heard people say, won't it be great after the Passover to have all of our sins for the past year forgiven? And I thought, is that how it works? Do you save them all up and then at the Passover they're forgiven? Well, let's talk about repentance and forgiveness, because those are very important. Repentance and forgiveness. And that's one doctrine pretty much anybody who calls themselves Christian, whether they understand and believe what we do or not, all who call themselves Christian believe this.

Jesus died for our sins. Matter of fact, let's turn to a scripture. Go to Romans chapter 5. Romans 5 and we'll begin in verse 8. And I'll give you a warning now. We're going to keep coming back to Romans. So if you don't find it easily, maybe stick a marker in there, because we're going to read a lot of several scriptures out of Romans.

This is one of those scripture-intensive sermons. Romans 5 and verse 8. But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. So we're justified by His blood. He died for us. Let's turn back to Hebrews chapter 9 to see this phrase another way. Hebrews 9 and verse 26.

This is breaking into a discussion of how Jesus Christ serves as High Priest, but as Priest, He's not sacrificing animals the way the priest under the order of Aaron did. He has a different type of sacrifice to offer. In verse 26 it says, So Christ sacrificed Himself to put away sin.

Now that sounds like a good deal. We might ask, How do I get in on that deal? He paid the penalty that should be falling on me. How do I have that applied? Well, the answer is in Acts chapter 2. If you have this memorized, you don't have to turn there. It seems like I've been reading it a lot lately. But on that fateful Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out and Peter gave that very powerful sermon, some men were there and asked Him that question. They said another word, different words, but they were saying, What do we do? How do we have our sins covered? And in Acts 2.38 Peter said, Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. And you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now the only thing he didn't specifically say there is that we do laying on of hands for you to receive the Spirit. And that's described elsewhere in the Bible. Repentance is very important. It's a theme that runs clear through the Bible, especially in the New Testament. Mark 1, 14, and 15. I won't turn there only because we've read it so many times. It was the basis of the Kingdom of God seminars. But Jesus at the beginning of His ministry said, He came in preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, saying, The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Gospel. I like that. Two of those were pieces of information. He said, The time is at hand. The Kingdom of God is at hand. So what do you do? Repent and believe. Now, where we differ from many others who call themselves Christians, and we've been severely criticized for it, is that we understand that once we repent of sin, we have to stop breaking God's law. We understand that sin is the transgression of the law. That's in 1 John 3, 4. Or, in modern translations, sometimes say, sin is lawlessness. We understand that if we want eternal life, instead of eternal death, we have to be forgiven of our sins that bring that penalty. The wages of sin or the results of sin is death. But we just read Jesus Christ paid that death penalty for us, and His sacrifice cleanses us from our sins when we repent. But repentance is not necessarily a one-time proposition.

And there are some churches that say, once you repent and give your heart to the Lord, it's all done. You're under grace, and you don't have to worry about it. You know, that's a doctrine often referred to as once saved, always saved. We disagree with that. Let's go back to Romans 6.

Romans 6 will begin in verse 1.

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, which is the breaking of God's law, that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Let's go down to verse 12. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lust. Don't present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourself to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace.

Under grace. Many professing Christians claim that what Paul is saying here is that under grace means there's no longer any requirement to obey the law. Now, the law is done away. You have grace instead of law. But does that make sense? Didn't we just read at the start of this chapter? They said, you shouldn't be sinning. He goes on saying, don't be a slave to sin. Why would he then turn around and say, well, you're under grace, so there's no such thing as sin, because there's no such thing as law. Now, that's not what the Scripture's saying. Let's look at chapter 7, Romans 7 and verse 12. We see what Paul thinks of the law. Therefore, the law is holy. The commandment is holy, just and good. And there are similar statements throughout the Bible. In one of David's psalms, I'll cite this for you. Psalm 19, verse 7 says, the law is perfect, converting the soul. So there's not a problem with God's law. The only problem with the law is that we humans have trouble keeping it. You know, we keep going in violation. But even when we accept that the law is good, and even when we desperately want to obey it, we do tend to find ourselves overtaken by temptations. You know, there's our ego, greed. You know, our human nature pulls us in, and we end up, as Paul described, while we're here in chapter 7. Mr. Warren described this, starting in verse 14. And actually, in the Kingdom of God seminars, we used this passage from the New Living Translation, and I like the way it reads. So I'm going to read this version, and if you have a different one, you can follow along. But he says, I've discovered this principle of life, that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what's wrong. I love God's law with all my heart, but there's another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to sin that's still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that's dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is.

In my mind, I really want to obey God's law, but because of my sinful nature, I'm a slave to sin. As I said, I like that modern translation, and the way it puts it, it matches with what we can find in 1 John, the book of 1 John 1.

1 John 1, beginning in verse 8.

He writes, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Remember, sin is breaking the law. John himself wrote that, so he's saying we have sin because we break the law, which means there must still be a law. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. How much of our unrighteousness? All of it.

If we say that we've not sinned, though, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Now, does that mean, though, that we're free to just go back to sinning?

Of course not. Read the very next verse, chapter 2. My little children, I write these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sin. That's the thing that makes it better. He's the fix, which I hate to... that seems to demean it. But Jesus Christ... well, we can use a big word. Propitiation. He pays the penalty. He makes the penalty for our sin go away.

Not only our sins, or not for ours only, but also for the world. That matches. What did Paul say in Romans 7? Who will save us? Jesus Christ. The one through whom the Father made all things. And I think that was on purpose. He was the one that made us so he could pay our penalty. So we can dispense with any notion that we teach that we earn salvation by our works. Some people have accused us of that. We know better.

There is no amount of obeying the law that can earn us salvation. But we are still obligated to obey the law. Live God's way of life. Being pardoned from the death penalty because someone else paid that penalty for us doesn't give us license to keep on sinning. When we sin again, we need to repent again. I believe we pretty well understand this. But it could possibly lead someone into a different type of misconception. We aren't saved by obeying the law. But if we don't watch ourselves, we could develop the idea, perhaps unconsciously, that our salvation is based on how well we repent.

Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't repent well. Someone might say, well, I'm not very good at keeping the Sabbath. But boy, do I repent a lot. I go out and break it every week and then I repent real wholeheartedly. Well, God accepts our repentance, but He wants us to stop breaking the law. We must keep in mind that repenting means to change direction. You're going down one way, that's the way that leads to death.

So we want to turn to a different direction, go God's way. And we shouldn't be turning in circles, going back and forth. God calls us to a major repentance. When we were going down, we could call it the road to death. Now we're going down the right road, the road to life. But it's not an easy road to stay on because it's kind of narrow. You can see that in Matthew 7. I didn't totally make up this analogy, although I'm embellishing it plenty.

Matthew 7, verse 13. 13. Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, or the road that leads to destruction. And many go there by it. But narrow is the gate, and difficult is the way that leads to life. It's a small road. This is where the common phrase in English, the straight and narrow comes from.

Straight is the gate, and narrow is the road. So you've got to stay on the straight and narrow. But it's easy to get off a road that's really small and narrow. I've learned that since I moved down to Southern Ohio. We've got some small roads. A lot of them are narrow, but they're not all that straight. But still, hopefully most of our repenting after that major repentance is what we call course correction. You drift a little off that road because it's narrow, but you straighten up. You do repent, but it's not that you were going the opposite direction.

Like I said, drifting a little when you get back on is what we'd expect. You don't want to barrel off the road across the median and be going full blast the wrong way down the interstate. But we know that God will forgive us even if that is what we've done. We read in 1 John 1, 19, He forgives all unrighteousness. He doesn't say, you've reached the eighth time you've done this, this year you're cut off. No, He will forgive us. We need to repent. Remember Peter asked Jesus, how many times do I have to forgive my brother, seven whole times?

And Jesus probably went, Peter. No, 70 times seven. And that's just what he was telling Peter, an unconverted, not fully converted yet man, how much more will God do for us? He's not putting numbers up there. But still, we don't earn our salvation by being good at repenting. And we certainly do not sin more often so that we can repent more often.

If we go back to Romans, the Apostle Paul addressed that specifically, Romans 3 and verse 8. Because there were some that picked up on that as a teaching. They said, God loves to forgive us when we repent. So since God likes forgiving us, we should sin all the more so that we can repent all the more. So that's what Paul is addressing when he says here in Romans 3 verse 8, And why not say, let us do evil that good may come, as we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say, their condemnation is just.

Paul's not mincing words. We don't teach that. That's not the way. But I could ask, though, then, is it a matter of timing? Do we need to make sure that we time our death so that we've repented just beforehand and we don't have time to sin again?

And that's how we'll make sure we're in God's kingdom. Now, that shouldn't be that far-fetched. The Catholic Church, and I think some others, have the doctrine of, they call it extreme unction. In English, we call it last rites. Just before you're going to die, get your sins covered so that you don't go burn in hell. Well, I don't think that's it. Nor, as I referred earlier, I don't think that at the end of Passover service, as much as we feel we've drawn closer to God and understand repentance, I don't think we're more qualified at the end than we were at the beginning.

Not just, now, I should say it's possible because you can repent at any time, but God's not looking for this particular mark. But I want to discuss more what he meant by under grace. Paul used that phrase, and I referred to it. Let's look at that. Now, grace. Grace is a word that's common in the English language, and it has more than one definition.

We can talk about someone moving gracefully, or there's grace under pressure. That refers to someone having a certain deportment, a way of handling yourselves. I haven't been accused of that myself. But grace has a religious meaning as well, and of course, in this setting, that's what we want to refer to.

Now, as I said, many people in society think that grace means a freedom from restrictions. You know, being under grace means the law is done away. Well, if they're mistaken, that is not what it means. They think it's a matter of law or grace, but we know better.

Now, many of us are familiar with the definition Mr. Armstrong used. He liked to call grace free, unmerited pardon. And that's correct. That shows that the law was not abolished, but it's by God's grace, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that we're freed from the death penalty. Not because it's not earned, the death penalty is invoked and paid for by Jesus Christ.

And so we're under grace. We have a pardon from that penalty that we didn't deserve. Now, that focuses, though, on one particular aspect of God's grace. I want to expand a little bit. I've got out my Strongest Concordance with the lexicon in it to do some checking, so this is the more academic portion. But in each Hebrew and Greek, each use one word for grace, pretty much, which is handy. You know, with sin, there's a whole bunch of different words, and law, there's different words.

In Hebrew, the word is chin, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. It's transliterated as C-H-E-N. And the Strong's number is 2580, if you want to check up on me. Not that I think you're doubting me, but some people like to get into this themselves. The exact definition of that word is favor or kindness. Favor or kindness, and secondary definitions are pleasant, precious. That's interesting. I thought, certainly, God showing us kindness, or doing us a favor, is pleasant and it's precious. In Greek, the word is charis. The Strong's number is 5485, and translated into English, I've seen it with a K, K-A-R-I-S, or C-H-A-R-I-S. And it means a benefit, a benefit, a favor, or a gift.

Specific to religion, it means a divine benefit, a divine favor. So, I think that's a good, a broader definition of grace is divine favor. God giving us something we don't earn or deserve. Certainly forgiveness falls within that. But there are other blessings from God that could be considered grace. I think that's why Paul, at the end of many of his epistles, says, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

He's not saying that to say, may God forgive you, you dirty sinner. He's saying, God grant you blessing and favor. Now, I want to focus one notable aspect of God's grace, the divine benefit He gives us, is His presence and influence in us through His Holy Spirit. God giving us the Holy Spirit is an aspect of His grace. He gives it to us when we don't deserve it.

Let's remind ourselves of the defining characteristic of a Christian. It's here in the book of Romans 8. Romans 8 and verse 9.

We believe a Christian is a begotten, but not yet spiritually born, Son of God.

But here's a different definition for that. Romans 8 and verse 9. You are not in the flesh, but the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. That's the Spirit of God is in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, He's not His. Now, that doesn't mean you're not focusing on that and wanting to serve God, but He's saying, technically speaking, if the Spirit's not in you, you're not a Christian.

At least by this definition. I don't want to criticize it. I said, if you haven't been baptized yet, the Spirit is working with you. That's how God calls you and brings you along. But I hope, as I said, I didn't want the sermon to exclude people that aren't baptized, but I do hope it'll help people that aren't to think, why not? Why not be moving towards that?

Partly because when we're young, sometimes we think, well, I'm not qualified to be baptized. Well, I've been asking, are we qualified to be in the first resurrection? How do you get qualified? Do you have to overcome all sin and then be baptized? And that doesn't work that way. I'm getting off my notes here. Let's move on.

Let's go to Romans 8, verse 14. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. You did not receive the Spirit of bondage again to fear. You received the Spirit of adoption. I want to stop there because the word that's translated adoption is the Greek hyuio-thesis, which I'm not sure if I can say that more than once, but it's translated adoption.

That's not necessarily a bad translation, but it means literally of a son, or sonship is the better way to translate that. And the reason I want to make that distinction is that when someone is adopted, they have all the legal rights of a natural-born child, but they're still not a natural-born child. And that's not what Paul is saying. He says, when you have the Holy Spirit, you are imbued with God's essence.

And so it's sort of like when a sperm fertilizes an egg and a new life is created. We, in a sense, you could say we have God's DNA when we have His Spirit. We're not going to be adopted children. We're Spirit-born, conceived. We're going to have God's essence in us. So not adopted. Not that there's anything wrong with being adopted. I'm not putting that down. I'm saying, though, we're going to be God's children because we inherited His traits.

Continue on the thought. For you did not receive the adoption. Whereby we cry, Abba, Father, the Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children then heirs, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. Now, we don't have to suffer necessarily by being beaten and crucified, as Christ was, but we have to bear whatever trials He allows us to go through. Now, we symbolically put our old self to death with Christ on our repentance and baptism. And I think we understand that's the symbolism of baptism. We put our old self to death, and that old life is buried.

And we want to bring out a new life coming out of the water. As a matter of fact, I didn't make that up either. Romans 6 and verse 3. Romans 6 and verse 3. Do you not know that as many of us, as were baptized unto Christ Jesus, were baptized unto His death? So He died, and we participate in that death symbolically by our baptism. Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection. So we symbolically participate in His death, and we're looking forward to really participating in life coming up after... He was literally resurrected from the dead, and we look forward to that not only symbolically, but in real life. So when we review, a person repents and is baptized, He puts that old man, His former way of life, in the grave.

A new person comes up out of the water, led by the Holy Spirit, and as I said, it's a new life. Let's turn to Galatians, Chapter 20. I want to emphasize this, that it is something new because God is living in us. Galatians 2, 20. This is one we memorized in college. One of our professors told us it was His absolute favorite Scripture.

It took me a while to understand, but I see the reason why this is a good one to put up there on that list. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live. It's like I'm not that old Me is not living, but Christ lives in me. The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved Me and gave Himself for Me. So this life I'm living now is a new life that has God, you know, it's because I have God's essence joined in my essence, and it's a part of it.

Now, this sounds wonderful, and I don't want to say it sounds, but it is wonderful. But one problem still remains. Symbolically, it's a new life, and we do have God's Spirit. Not only symbolically, we really have His Spirit, but we're still living flesh and blood. I don't have a pen here, but I was bleeding earlier when I scratched something. Sometimes, as flesh and blood humans, we fall short.

In Hebrew, I think it's haremartea, we miss the mark, we sin.

That old self that we put under the water is struggling to get back out. For some reason, I get this vision of something like a zombie movie. That old self is trying to get out, and we're trying to hold it down, stay under the water. We have this lifelong struggle to keep the old self in that watery grave.

And we know sometimes there's a lag time. There's a gap between when you sin and when you realize it and repent.

And that's true for all of us, I'm sure. Hopefully we keep it short. But during that time, are we in danger of eternal damnation? As I said, if your life ends and you haven't repented yet, where does that leave you? And I made a... I was going to use a chart here, so pardon me while I pull over the tripod.

Put this up here so the brethren in Kressensburg can see it.

Imagine our life when we're sinful and we're under the condemnation of death. Now God calls us. At some point we start moving and we repent and we're baptized. We cross over and we're under grace. We have the chance for life.

But when we sin, do we now cross back over and we're under condemnation? And we repent, we come back, and it's like a corkscrew. We're going back and forth. And you hope your life ends while you're on this side of the mark.

Now it's easy to visualize it this way.

Sorry, Luca, I'm not trying to cause you problems back there.

But we just read that a person is a child of God if he has the Holy Spirit. So that's the other aspect. It's not just, did you sin and repent. Do you have God's Holy Spirit? Do we imagine if we're doing it like this, you have the Holy Spirit, you don't have it, you have the Spirit, and he takes it away?

Or is there something else that's happening?

So we have it. Does sinning automatically remove the Holy Spirit? Does the Bible tell us one way or the other? And I want to make a note. I'm not asking, can you ever lose the Holy Spirit? That's a different question. And we'll address that a little bit later on, but that's not my main point.

But I think this does relate to my question of, are you qualified to be in the first resurrection and in God's kingdom right now?

Because this would make it look like you might be or you might not be, depending. Well, a determining factor, then, is, is God's Spirit in you? Let's turn to Romans 8.

We want to make sure we note this, because this seems to give the answer, or at least an important part of the answer. Romans 8, verse 11.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead, that's God the Father. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies.

Through his Spirit that dwells in you. Now, he says, mortal bodies, remember, Paul, in another place in Corinthians, I believe, stated that he thought Jesus Christ would return while they were all still alive. And he said, but those who have died will be raised instantly in spirit bodies. So, when it says mortal bodies, don't let that throw you off track. But he's saying, if you have the Spirit of God in you, the one who raised Jesus Christ from the dead is going to raise you from the dead.

So, the distinction seems to be, do you have God's Spirit in you? And that brings that, is the Spirit taken away from you when you sin and given back when you repent? I think I'm doing it backwards here, but... Well, I think we can look to the Old Testament for an answer to that question. Some of you might be ahead of me on this. There's an example that I think can be pretty decisive. King David was a man after God's own heart, known for serving God loyally, also known, though, for sinning greatly and repenting greatly. I talked about earlier, you say, boy, I'm good at repenting. David was good at repenting. Let's read the highlights of this story starting in 1 Samuel 16. We want to pick this up. This is the 1 Samuel 16 discusses when David was chosen to be king over Israel. We know Saul was the king before that, and he didn't remain small in his own eyes. So God said he sent Samuel to the sons of Jesse to find a king, who he said would be a man after his own heart. Now, God looked on the heart so when the older brothers who were taller and probably better looking walked through, God told Samuel, no, no, not them. You know, I'm looking in the heart. And so he chose David. And if we read in verse 13, here's the anointing. Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him, that is David, in the midst of his brothers. And the spirit of the eternal came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose and went to Rehma. So David had God's Holy Spirit. Now, from what we understand, the Holy Spirit was not given out widely in the Old Testament era. But it seems a few people did have it. And the Bible tells us David had it. He had God's Holy Spirit.

Now, we know David lived a pretty adventurous life. He did a lot of good. We also know that he had some sins, and he had one major incident. We'll move ahead to 2 Samuel now. 2 Samuel 11.

I wonder. I think the only thing that would offset how embarrassed it would be to be David in the resurrection and see how many times people have read about this incident, it would be offset by how helpful it's been to people to be able to learn from it. So I think David is such a big man, he probably won't be embarrassed. He'll be glad it was so useful.

Now, we see he had a problem. It says in verse 2, It happened one evening, David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold.

I'd say at this point, David probably committed his first sin already in his mind. David sent and inquired about the woman, and someone said, It's Bathsheba, the daughter of a lion, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. David sent messengers and took her.

She came to him. He lay with her, for she was cleansed from her impurity, and she returned to her house. And the woman conceived. So she sent a message to David, and she said, I'm with child. That's where David says, uh-oh, I didn't plan on that. So, I'm not going to read all the story.

We know David thought, what am I going to do? I mean, maybe, I wonder, he might have been feeling fairly repentant at this time, or maybe he was so off on his own, he wasn't really turning back to God. We know he didn't want this to become widely known, so he sent to the battle for Uriah to come and give him a report, and he met in conference and talked about how things were going, hoping that Uriah would then go back to his house and sleep with his wife, and things like that, and that he would think that this child was his.

But Uriah didn't go along with that. He said, all my fellow soldiers and the officers of the army are dwelling in tents. I'm not going to go home to the comforts of my house and have the pleasures of being with my wife, so he slept in the servants' quarters. So David decides he's got to take a further step. In 2 Samuel 11, verse 14, in the morning it happened that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah.

And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retreat from him, that he may be struck down and die. So it was, while Joab besieged the city, he assigned Uriah to a place where he knew were valiant men. The men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the people of the servants of David fell. Uriah the Hittite died also. We move down to verse 26. When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband. When her mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house.

She became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David did had displeased the eternal. That's wonderful for his understatement. I think he was displeased. And one of the reasons I wanted to read a bit more of the story than I would have necessarily had to is to think, he sinned pretty badly.

There's not much that we'll ever do that's going to top this. So in this scenario, not repentance, Holy Spirit taken away? Well, we know that he did repent in time. As I said, I speculate, I wonder, was he starting repenting, or did he repent earlier and fall back? But in 1 Samuel 12, or 2 Samuel 12, I'm sorry, moving ahead, the eternal sent Nathan to David. And he came to him and said, and he lays out this allegory to show David his sin in theoretical terms, that David condemned the man who was wrong in the allegory. And of course, Nathan told him, well, you're the man, and lays it all out for him.

Going down to verse 9, he says, why have you despised the commandment of the eternal to do evil in his sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and you've taken his wife to be your wife, and you've killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. Now therefore the sword will never depart from your house, because you've despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.

God promised a pretty harsh punishment, but that punishment, he didn't promise... Let me say that again. He didn't promise a punishment of eternal death. He accepted David's repentance. Down in verse 13, David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the eternal. I wonder if it was just, I have sinned. Now it's very clear. And Nathan said to David, the eternal also is put away your sin. You will not die. Now he didn't mean he would never die, but he meant that he wouldn't die right then, and I think also he wasn't facing eternal death. He wasn't on this side of the line. Now if we only read this account, we might wonder, well, how thorough was that repentance?

He just said, well, I've sinned. Now it wasn't like that. If we go to Psalm 51, we'll see a little bit of what was going on in David's mind. But not very often we have someone who is very eloquent describe their feelings and their prayer to God. And that's exactly what Psalm 51 is. I'm sure he prayed to God and wanted to record some of this. As I said, maybe he knew that future Scriptures would include the sin.

He wanted to include the other part of it, you know, for the benefit of people. The first verse says, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I acknowledge my transgression. My sin is always before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge. Always pause there and I think, really? Against you only? What about Uriah?

But, I don't mean to bring that in humor. Our sins are against God and people often suffer because of them. But Uriah belonged to God the way all of us do, so David was sinning against God on more than one level. And we see, I think this is real repentance. He acknowledged his sin. He asked for forgiveness. He wanted to do better. He was asking for help to do better. And if we go down to verse 10, he says, Create in me a clean heart, O God, renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.

Don't take your Holy Spirit from me. This seems to indicate that as bad as David's sins were, and even though he'd covered them up and didn't repent right away, God still had not taken away his Holy Spirit. God hadn't cast him out of his presence. David's saying, Please don't cast me out of your presence and please don't take away your Holy Spirit.

Although we could say, David saw that those things were real possibilities. David realized, If I don't get straightened up, I can have the Spirit taken away. And as we're going to read some scriptures to show, that's a pretty fearful, scary thing that we don't want. But now, was God showing David special favor? I like this guy more than the others, so I'm going to keep the Spirit in him even though he's sinning. I don't think so. God is not a respecter of persons.

He doesn't show partiality. It must be that what I drew here is not accurate. I thought I had a napkin up here, do I? This can't be right. We're not crossing back and forth and having the Spirit given to us and taken away. Maybe it's something else. We do know that, as I said, the Bible is clear that we can have the Holy Spirit taken away from us. We can earn eternal death, but maybe, instead of crossing the line, we should focus on direction. What if we start here, we're sinners, God begins to call us, we understand, we start changing our lives, we repent and get baptized, and we receive the Holy Spirit. Now, we're going to sin, but maybe rather than crossing the line, it's a matter of direction. We head back, but then we repent and we move on again. We'll probably sin and come back, but we repent. Hopefully, we're still staying over here, under grace. That's why I wanted to make sure I had this word up here. We're under grace. And I think I can...not only I think I can, I'm pretty sure I have some scriptures to expound that a little bit more. But I do want to make the point, though, if we refuse to repent, and we are sinning against the guidance of God's Holy Spirit, and I think it's important to realize, as long as we're under grace and have that Spirit, when we're not doing things God's way, His Holy Spirit tells us that. It's almost like, you know, sirens go off, red lights flash. And, you know, it's not really like that, but most of us have been in that situation where something in your head is telling you, I've got to straighten this up. I've got to fix this. Because if we don't, then we can come back across that line. Let's look in Hebrews, chapter 6. We should be aware of what the possibilities are. Hebrews 6 and verse 4.

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the power of the age to come if they fall away to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame. This tells us, when we do make that repentance and we turn to go down that straight and narrow path, God means it to be a one-way road. We don't get off and go back. Let's go to chapter 10, Hebrews 10 and verse 26. Hebrews 10 and 26. If we sin willfully after we've received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. That's what's commonly called the unpardonable sin. It means deliberately turning toward the way of death, knowing what you're doing, ignoring the warning signs. That's resisting the Holy Spirit, which Jesus talked about with the Pharisees, until you've gone all the way out of God's grace. Now, how long a process would that be? I don't know. That's the one thing I'm going to say. I don't know how long a process it is, but I think if there's an unpardonable sin, it must mean that most sin is pardonable. We can be forgiven. We read in Scripture, it said, all our unrighteousness will be forgiven if we repent. And we want to keep in mind along those lines, it's not the particular transgression that makes a sin unpardonable. It's that willful, deliberate choice and continuance in that choice. And I don't think that's where any of us are. Hopefully none of us. As I said, having been on this side and crossing back to this side, and this is just a graphic. I mean, God might have... He'd probably use PowerPoint, but he's not here. I don't think God would mind a little jest on that. But what I'm saying is, this is just a representation, but the idea is, when we cross that line, God gives us a lot of leeway, and He tries very hard to keep us from crossing back over this line. And that's one of the reasons I say, some people, I think, have put off baptism, because they're afraid of crossing back over the line. They've read the Scriptures we just read, and they say, Oh, I don't want to have the Holy Spirit and then lose it, because then there's eternal death and damnation. Now, if you just sin again, that's not what it means. It means you know the way, you understand God's way, and you deliberately, willfully choose, no, I don't want that. And I'm willing to have eternal death, and that's what I want, and that's my choice. Satan and the demons have made that choice. I think very few humans have or ever will, because who would want to? That's why I'm saying, I've lost track of where I was in my notes, but I think, you know, to commit the unpardonable sin, I think, takes a lot of what we call want to, and most of us don't want to. Let's go back to Romans and see what Paul says. Romans 4 and 6.

Romans 4 and 6. Just as David also describes the blessedness, and we're going back to David, we know he did know a lot about God's way. The blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. And it says, Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. As it said in verse 6, imputes righteousness. Now, we don't use that word impute very much.

But it means God counting something. Let's go to Romans 6 to see more about this. But we say God's imputing righteousness, not imputing sin. Let's see that put in different words. Romans 6, verse 6.

Hold on, I'm hesitating to see. No, I didn't miss it. Okay. I think I'm thinking ahead.

Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. We read earlier we symbolically put our old self to death at baptism with Christ. And a new life begins with Christ living in us. Now, let's go over to verse 9.

Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead, indeed to sin, but alive to God and Jesus Christ our Lord. I wanted to focus on that word, reckon. Now, we do use that. I find it's used more as we get closer to the hills. But it's a different word than when we say, I reckon I'll go do. Actually, it is similar. The reckon is that Greek word logomai... well, the Greek word for it is logizomai. Boy, that's hard to say. It's a Greek word. It means basically accounted. Counted for righteousness, not counted. It's like in an accounting program. You put it on one side of the ledger, not the other. God reckons us as righteous, not as sinful, even though we do sin. But we sin, but He counts Christ's righteousness. So when we have... there's a lag time sometimes. We sin, we're going to repent. God doesn't move us across the line. He applies Christ's righteousness in our stead. He doesn't take away the Holy Spirit. We're still under grace. And that's a very important, I think a very comforting thing to realize. Now, as I said, we can go back under that penalty by not being repentant, by willfully sinning. But as I said, who would want to do that? And you pretty much have to want to. But if we're not doing that, if we're not sinning willfully and resisting the Holy Spirit, then God is counting us as righteous. He's imputing righteousness, not imputing wickedness.

I think my tongue is getting tired. Having trouble coming, the words come out. So we're not under the law, meaning the death penalty of the law. We still need to obey the law, but we're not going to get that penalty because God is imputing righteousness. We're under grace, that state of divine favor. And it includes the free, unmarried, and un-mated faith. And it includes the free, un-mated pardon of sin. And also the blessing of not having our sins counted against us. But rather, the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Now, I've got a note here that I wrote in red ink and big letters because it's in human nature that then say, Oh, that's great! I can sin! And I don't have to worry about it. No! No, no, no! That's not what it means. We do not say, now since we're under grace, we can sin. And Paul addressed that specifically if we go on in Romans 6, verse 15. What then? Shall we sin? Because we're not under the law, but under grace? Certainly not. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey? You are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. That's Paul saying, I'm using an analogy, sort of me saying, I'm using a white board because we're flesh and blood and it's hard to convey these concepts. For just as you presented your members as slaves to uncleanness and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. That's what God wants us to do. Because we're under grace, continue to put away sin knowing that we can. We all want to be living up to this standard, leaving behind sin, becoming more like God. God's law is eternal. It's a spiritual law, and breaking it brings the penalty of death. Yet we know that we can be spared from that penalty if we repent. If we ask God to apply the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in our stead, He'll do so. And then with the power of God's Holy Spirit in us, we can obey God's law. There are some that say, well, you just can't obey the law. That's why you had to get rid of it. No, that's not true. We can obey the law with God living in us. It takes time. We make mistakes and stumble. But, of course, if you have to answer that question, are you qualified for God's kingdom right now? None of us would say we're perfect, but we can all say we're under God's grace.

And as such, we deliberately turn from... Well, unless we deliberately turn from striving to live God's way, even though we occasionally sin and need to repent, we don't need to live in fear. You know, that we're constantly balancing a tightrope, and we're crossing over eternal damnation, then coming back to repentance. As we examine our lives and we think about the Passover, we don't want to be down and dejected and feel worthless and ugly and just terrible. We want to rejoice. And this time of year is one of great rejoicing. And that's, again, where I said I think Mr. Warren's message and mind fit together because he wanted to emphasize the fact that this is a happy thing. God wants us to examine ourselves and overcome sin, but he wants us to rejoice that he's giving us the power and he's keeping us under his grace and counting Christ's righteousness for us as we develop and become more righteous. So as we examine ourselves, are you moving in the right direction? If not, why not? And if you are, keep it up and do more. Do more of the same. Let's get our lives going the right way, but not live in fear and dread. We can rejoice in God's salvation. We can know that we are the blessed. We're the ones whom God has forgiven. We're the ones to whom God does not impute sin.