Radio Broadcast Wednesday 06/08/2022

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ P39 (06-08-22)

We Have Been Reconciled to God – Reconciliation Happened One Time, At The Cross

The problem with today is that people do not understand the New Covenant. It is seldom taught. People don’t even understand what the term reconciled to God means. We are not saved by the death of Jesus on the cross, we are saved by the Life of Jesus coming to live in you and me, the Holy Spirit comes to live in us when we place faith in Jesus. It is so vitally important that we understand this. Listen in as Bob explains in detail the heart of the gospel.

In today’s lesson, from the Bible study booklet, A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ, available for purchase from our online Bob George Ministries ecommerce store

Just as a person’s physical growth is based on proper diet and exercise, so is the Christians’s spiritual growth dependent on regular feeding upon the word of God and application of its principles. With more false teaching, shifting opinions and general confusion in the world than ever before, Christians need a solid foundation upon which to base their beliefs and build their lives. The word of God declares that Jesus Christ is that foundation of truth. With that in mind, let’s now take A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ.

All of our lessons that we’ve been teaching through over these last number of weeks are around the subject of your identity in Christ. In other words, what has already happened to you, it’s a part of your inheritance in Christ. We have talked about so many times, but it’s vitally important for us to understand this fact that the New Covenant that basically all of this is around the New Covenant. The New Covenant is the circle that envelops everything that we have. In other words, if you were in to envision a circle and put in that circle, reconciliation, forgiveness, sanctification justification, child of God, citizen of Heaven, eternal life, totally loved… just go on, and on, and on; all of that would be encompassed in a circle called the New Covenant, a new agreement between God and man, whereby God through an oath and an indestructible life, guaranteed, that the inheritance that we now have in Christ Jesus to all of those who come to Him by faith by faith alone. So it’s all encompassed in this new covenant.

It many times, Bob, because we don’t have the circle around all of these things called the New Covenant. These things are just out there dangling. And so, we spend great emphasis on forgiveness, or great emphasis and debating on do you have eternal life or not? And are you sanctified or aren’t you? Because all of these subjects are out there floating around in the air. And all of a sudden this great big circle comes and encompasses all of them and the issue is are you sanctified or not? Are you under the New Covenant or aren’t you? In other words, have you accepted the new agreement between God and man because if you have, then all of these elements are a part of that new covenant. So I don’t have to sit around wondering, am I justified, am i sanctified, am I glorified, all of those kind of things. It’s, am I in the New Covenant or aren’t I? Am I a part, have I accepted this new agreement between God and man, or haven’t I? I know if I have then all of this is a part of my inheritance and I don’t have to sit around wondering whether I’m saved or not. The reason that people are still today after a two thousand years debating whether you’re, whether your salvation is secure or not, is because that’s an element floating in space. Folks, that is not an element floating in space. It has been encompassed by a circle called the New Covenant and in that New Covenant, you have eternal life.

So the issue isn’t whether you have eternal life or not or whether you can lose eternal life or not. The issue is, are you in the New Covenant or aren’t you? Now if you’re in the New Covenant, that is an agreement between God, whereby He says, I God, am the guarantor of a guarantee that your sins and lawless acts I will never see again. Now the issue is, do you want to spit in his face and make a mockery out of this New Covenant? Or do we want to rejoice in the fact that we are in the New Covenant if I am in Christ? And I couldn’t be in the new covenant if I was not in Christ, because Christ in essence is the New Covenant. And so I couldn’t be in there without Christ. But if I am indeed in Christ, then I have been encircled by this promise of God, that was given by this oath of God and therefore, I can rest in absolute security and as it says in Hebrews, to be able to walk into his presence with total assurance of faith. If God didn’t mean to have assurance, then hide it for me to have assured effect. It is important for you my friends that you are able realize that you have full assurance and to develop that. How do you develop that, through working grunting sheathing from spiritual experiences,trying to draw closer to God all of these man-made things? No, you realize you come to grace, God has done for you. You’ve come to realize that to step out of an old Covenant, whether as a Israelite or Gentile, I was born under the law. I stepped out of that into a new agreement between God and man, whereby, I am a child of the living God, forever and ever and ever. That is an eternal promise and nothing can take that away from me, and nothing can separate me from it. Trials can’t, as Paul said, tribulation can’t, nakedness can’t, sword can’t, nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Now the love of God is the initiator of the New Covenant. It was out of love that God looked down, seeing us in our pitiful condition and said, I’m going to make a new covenant with my people. At that time, I’m going to put my laws in their hearts. It’s no longer going to be written out in stone. But those laws aren’t going to be ten of them. They’re just going to be one, two, love God, with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself because upon that all law hinges. And so in as much as a man could not even live up to those two laws, God came, the God of love to live inside of us in order to do for us what we could never have done on our own. So God gave His life for us then, so that raised from the dead, He can live in us now.

So reconciliation folks, like forgiveness, like righteousness, like redemption, sanctification, justification, all of these things are all encompassed in this circle, called the New Covenant. Keep that in mind folks. You used to be out dangling in space. Now you are encompassed by a New Covenant and in that New Covenant, you have already a part of your possession every single thing that we have been teaching on and continue to be teaching on until the Lord comes or takes us to be with Him. Now again, if that is not good news, then I don’t know what good news is. That is an inheritance that you and I have that is guaranteed; that inheritance is guaranteed by none other than God Himself.

Now, Bob, when we talk today, and if you have your Bibles folks, you will probably want to turn to Romans 5 and will be picking up in a moment in verse 10. And we’re going to be talking about reconciliation. Now, reconciliation is an accounting term. Each month when you receive your bank statement, why you’ll reconcile your account, making sure that your balance equals the bank’s balance, it’s an accounting term. Now, as an example, if I was in business and Bob you were in business, and you had sold me a half million dollars worth of materials and I went bankrupt and I couldn’t pay you that half million dollars. Ultimately, what would you do with your accounts receivable? You would write it off. You would write it off and in essence, you would be paying a debt that you did not owe for me that I owed, that I could not pay, you would be reconciling your books. You can’t collect it. So you take the loss and you reconcile it.

We’re going to be talking about the fact of how God was in Christ, reconciling you unto Himself, not counting your sins against you. And then we’re going to be talking about the second part of that which is you being reconciled to God. Now, getting back to our illustration, if I owed you this money, but I went bankrupt, I could not pay it. I absolutely am a goner. And therefore, after a period of time, you take that off of your accounts receivable ledger. In other words, you can’t put it down as something owed to you, because what is owed to you is gone. There’s no way to pay you. And so you reconcile your books by balancing your books and taking them off of your books paying the debt yourself. In other words, you didn’t owe it, you had sold it to me, but I can’t pay you. So therefore, even though I still have the material and of probably sold it and used it. You have nothing to get back from me. Then I don’t have anything. I’m bankrupt, therefor you and essence paid the totality of that debt yourself. So you took it off of your accounts receivable ledger. And then you’re going to see God saying to me over here, who feels terrible, I wanted to be able to pay you but I couldn’t pay you. I’m bankrupt. I just, I’m without hope and you therefore in love and kindness say Bob, I’ve taken that off of My books. Now Bob, did you have that debt on your accounts payable? Well, of course, if I am in business, why I’ve got to have financial records and so of course, I had that debt that I owed Bob Davis, a half million dollars and that would be on my accounts payable list. In other words, on my list of bill payments and on my assets against my liabilities, on the balance sheet would show a liability, a debt there of a half million dollars. That’s on my accounts payable ledger. Now out of your love for me you come and say, Bob I paid that debt, that I didn’t have to. I paid it, I didn’t have to, but it’s off of my ledger. I’ve taken it off my accounts receivable. Therefore it’s all off my books.

So Bob, because I love you and I want to be reconciled down to you personally, and I want us to remain friends. And to be friends, I’m asking you to take it off of your accounts payable. In other words, if I’ve taken it off my accounts receivable and you refuse to take it off of your accounts payable, every day you’re going to be looking at a debt that you owe me. And when you owe somebody a debt and you can’t pay it you don’t want to be around them. You feel guilty being around them and after a while you start hating that person, even though you’re the guilty party. You start hating the innocent party. Because of what you think that innocent party is thinking every time they see, and every time you come into my presence, you’d be saying, Bob, every time you see me, you’re going to say there is that Bob Davis that paid my debt and I know he’s calling me a slob down in his heart. That guy that didn’t pay his debt and I’m going to keep living in denial and I’ll start rationalizing, why I didn’t need to pay you or the fact that, yes I you, but you didn’t treat me, right anyway. Or I’ll just get down to the point of saying I feel so bad about this debt that I just absolutely am going to walk away from Bob Davis and my only prayer, if there’s a God in heaven is, please don’t ever let me run into him again. Now, that’s what you do when you do not take something off of your accounts payable like a ledger that quite frankly, is why it says forgive one another as Christ Jesus, forgave you. Because if I refuse to forgive another person, or if I have not been forgiven by another person, I don’t want to be around them. I don’t want to go into the presence of someone who hasn’t forgiven me. If I’ve offended them in some way, every time I see him say, let me get away from that guy because I don’t know what he’s going to do. He hasn’t forgiven me, he can do anything. He can kill me. He can slander me. Being able do anything if he hadn’t forgiven me. So not only do I not want to be around him, I will intentionally avoid him.

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Now, folks, because the world does not realize that this reconciliation has already taken place on your behalf. It isn’t that you have to do something, outside of come to the One who reconciled you, Jesus Christ, from the one who provided that reconciliation. It isn’t that God is mad at you even though you may be a raging heathen. He is not mad at you. He went to a cross to die for your sins the same way that he did for everybody’s.

So God isn’t mad at you. All He wants you to do, is come to my Son for life, which is what salvation is all about, life and death issue. The reason you have people rebellious toward God, the reason you have people in my opinion who say that I’m an atheist. I don’t believe anyone is born an atheist. I think you’re taught to be an atheist. And mostly you’re taught by Christians. And what causes you to be an atheist is I’m so hacked at this God, that is mad at me. This guy that I owe this debt, that won’t let me go. That I don’t even believe he exists. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a goner. Let him wipe him off. The average person that I’ve talked to, who are atheists, had a horrendous early childhood Christian experience under legalism. And that’s what they’re rebelling against is legalism. So you don’t rebel against love. You don’t come to somebody loves you perfectly, and say, get away from me, I don’t want to be around you. You rebelled with somebody you think he’s holding something against you. Don’t you?’ Sure. That person is holding someone against me. Well, I don’t want to be around you then.

And again, oh it’s kind of like in our churches and many times, our churches that are the proclaimers of these guilt trips. And God is mad at you and God’s gonna zap you and God is this, and so it’s kind of like me saying, Bob, I tell you, you make me sick to my stomach. I can’t stand to be around you. You smell bad. You look bad and everything else. Would you come over and have dinner with me Sunday? Looking forward to that, thank you very much Bob, but I think I’ll pass. I think I’ll go to the dumpster, get something good. And that’s what church has become a place where you’re going, that person telling you how much God hates you and how bad you are and how you better get straightened down and everything else. Now come y’all come back next Sunday so I can bury you again under legalism. And so it’s no wonder that we have the rebellion that we do. Not only is there an active rebellion, it says I don’t want to have anything to do with it. But liberalism is a form of rebellion. In other words, liberal theology is a form of rebellion. Liberal theology has its majority of the problem with liberal theology and the cause of it is that in most liberal seminaries, the Bible’s never taught. Very seldom that you get maybe the number of hours that you get studying the Bible at liberal seminaries is you’d get more in, you know, a few Sundays in church. You get a lot of counseling and a lot of history, and that type of thing, but not the Bible.

So there’s an automatic assumption that these evangelicals, these conservatives out there, why they quote Bible verses all the time so I guess they know what the Bible says. And so, I guess that’s what the Bible does say. But the God that I know, the God that I think loves me he and in that Bible. So I’m going to ignore the Bible or to just say I just don’t think it’s true. I don’t think it’s true, there’s a lot of errors in it. And the reason I think that is the case is they’ve never studied the New Covenant. They never studied the Bible. They just assume there’s no need studying that, because this God that I want to have is a God of love and the Bible certainly doesn’t teach that. So I don’t need the Bible because when I find out when I deal with a liberal, and I’m able to sit down with a person who is involved in liberal thinking and explain to them the love of God, that is in this Bible, they can’t wait to get into the Bible. And after they find out that sure enough under the New Covenant, the new agreement between God and man, that God that love that they’ve been looking for is there from cover to cover, it’s there. A person says, why do I need to keep casting doubt on the truth of the Bible? That Bible;s true, telling me about this God that I need deep down in my heart. So Bob, you see the ramifications? You got liberal theology that comes from teaching legalism. You got total rebellion that comes from legalism and all of this comes from not realizing that we have already been reconciled to God through the death of His Son.

Now with that, let’s go to Roman’s 5 beginning in verse 10 and we’ll just see if that doesn’t bear it out. For if when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to Him (That’s to God) through the death of His Son, how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved through His life and not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Now folks don’t just glance over words, for if when we were God’s enemies, what is that? What do you mean God’s enemies? Well, that’s lost. That isn’t somebody that’s out there shaking their fist at God. It can be their active rebellion or passive indifference. Either one. I was never rebellious against God, just indifferent. I was in, I was God’s enemy. In other words, I had not become his friend because you can’t become a friend to somebody, you don’t know. So how you going to be a friend to him? Say are you a friend, you know. Wally so and so and so now I don’t know Wally, I don’t know him. How can he be his friend? I don’t know who he is. So I was an enemy. I didn’t know God.

And so while I was an enemy, I was lost, dead in my sins and the uncircumcision of my sinful nature. What did God do? He reconciled me to Himself through the death of His Son. What does that mean? He looked down and said, there’s Bob George’s entire life, and there’s a debt, he’s guilty. And I’m taking it away. I’m taking it off of My books. We say, you mean up to today Lord? No, no, no, not up to today, forever. It’s gone. It’s off My book. Well, Lord, you don’t know what I’m gonna do tomorrow. Oh yes, I know what you’re gonna do tomorrow. I know what, somebody’s got to tomorrow a thousand years from now. So no, it’s off my books forever.

Now getting back to again, to our illustration here in the scriptures when we were God’s enemies, that was lost. Something took place on God’s behalf towards you that you didn’t even know about. Now as we talked about before, if as an example, you wrote that off of your books and that debt was no longer there, but you didn’t notify me, you didn’t tell me, or you put it in a paper that you had done that, but I didn’t read the paper. And how would I know that I had been reconciled? I wouldn’t know that and therefore, I would still be an enemy. I’d still wouldn’t want to be around you because it’s still owed you a debt that I can’t pay. Now there again, that’s the position of humanity before they hear the gospel. That’s why faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. If I don’t hear, don’t know that I’ve been reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how am I ever going to experience that reconciliation?

Now, unfortunately, there are a lot of people who have heard about reconciliation, but they don’t know what it means. And therefore are never reconciled and are sitting in church every day, listening about forgiveness, and yet, don’t realize what that means and that it’s a part of my possession. Again, it’s floating out there in space. It doesn’t have a circle around it. It hasn’t been encompassed in something called the New Covenant. And so therefore it’s ongoing. That’s something I have to keep getting, and getting, and getting and getting and begging for. And He said no, it’s in the circle. It’s not out there floating. It’s a part of being in the New Covenant. It’s a part of being in Christ, who is the New Covenant.

So when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son. Now, once again, this passage of scripture that we camp on, so often how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved through his life. You’re not saved by the death of Christ. You’re saved through His life. Now you couldn’t be saved with the kind of life that He came to give us called eternal life unless reconciliation was taken place. Reconciliation is where all my sins were forgiven. I was cleansed of all unrighteousness. That’s at the cross and the cross alone. That’s why when you talk about that, if we agree with God concerning our sins, He’s faithful and just to have forgiven and to have cleansed me of all unrighteousness. That took place at the cross. He’s faithful and just to have done that. It’s not the case He’s going to, He’s already done that. It happened one time at the cross. I have been reconciled to God through the death of His Son.

But you’re saved through His resurrected life. What are you saved from? The wages of sin, What’s the wages of sin? Death. What’s the solution to death? Well, life. And that’s why He came to give us life. Now, if He did not come to give me life, even though my sins were behind the back of God, never to see them again, written off the book. All I am is a dead forgiven corpse. So reconciliation had to proceed the justification that takes place through the resurrected life of Christ Jesus. So what caused man to die to begin with? We can just go back to creation and find that. What caused Adam and Eve to die? Sin. On the day that you eat thereof you will surely die. They did not die physically. They did not die soullessly that day. They died spiritually and death is nothing more than the absence of life. When life leaves your body, your body’s going to be dead. As long as life’s in your body you’re alive. So the spiritual part of man created by God, totally whole, totally complete, complete man physically, a complete man soullessly, a complete man spiritually, when he died spiritually, all that is, is that the life of God left man’s human life. His human spirit leaving his human spirit dead to what vacated it isn’t dead to the world. It’s dead to God. It’s dead to what vacated it. In other words, when it’s gone, why I’m dead to it. When my father died, I’m dead, he’s not here. So you’re dead to that. So man, therefore from that moment on all of us, born in Adam, dead in Adam in need of Life In Christ. And that’s what salvation has been. And that’s what the Holy Spirit of God has been doing for two thousand years is going throughout the world. Appealing to every man and woman boy and girl, on the face of this earth, come unto me for Life. Come to Me, come to Me, come to Me. I came that you might have life. That’s the whole appeal of salvation.

Now, so in order for that to occur, as I said, however, what caused death to begin with, had to be dealt with once and for all. Now, once again, what caused the Spirit of God to depart from Adam? Sin, the sin of Adam through that one man, Adam all died. It’s all of us. So we’re all born dead spiritually. Jesus Christ, the only Man ever born alive spiritually. Adam, the only man the first man created alive spiritually, died. Jesus the only Man ever born alive spiritually. That’s why the virgin birth is not up for grabs. Had He been born out of the loins of Adam like us, He would have been dead, been born dead spiritually. But His virgin birth is what enabled Him to be born, not created, born alive spiritually. That’s why He’s the only Man who could ever lay down His life for you and me. He’s the only one that ever had a life to lay down for you and me.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Classic Christianity, with Bob George. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We truly hope that today’s message has inspired you to walk a life of faith in the Lord, find more information online at shop.BobGeorge.net. There you’ll also find available CDs, DVDs, and bible studies available for purchase. It’s through your help that we are able to spread the good word of Jesus Christ. Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another and praise the Lord. Amen.