Radio Broadcast Wednesday 06/29/2022

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ P48 (06-29-22)

If You Are in Christ Jesus He Has Made You a Son of God Forever

It is so important to understand our identity and the completeness of our identity in Christ Jesus. God makes us a son of God when we receive Him by faith. He will never leave us nor forsake us, nor will he ever not call us a son.

Don’t let Satan put the lie in your head that somehow, by something you do or don’t do, that God is going to disown you. Remember this, if you go into the pigsty, God is right there with you.

Listen in to 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.

Now, I’m going to read to you a passage. It’s not in our study so but you might want to turn to me. If you are listening, turn to your Bible in the book of Ephesians and in chapter 1. You’re going to see Paul starts this this book of Ephesians and this unlike Paul’s other letters, the book of Ephesians does not address any particular error or heresy, he wrote this to help his readers to better understand the dimensions of God’s eternal purpose for them, and the grace of God that comes to them. And to come to appreciate the high goals that God has for His people. And one of the major themes of this book is that of unity. And that, all Christians are one family in Jesus and as a result of being a part of the family that we should act with love toward each other. Now, when you see a family, when you think of a family growing up from birth on, let’s say you had twins or let’s say, you had two kids close to each other. Why my daughter has two boys, getting ready for that third. Okay, now what do you see when they’re little kids doing with each other? Sharing their food, sharing their toys, loving each other, never being selfish with each other, never tattling on one another and never ever attempting to get the other one in trouble, never even thinking of that. Are any of those things true? Why, of course not. You see little kids competing with each other. You see, I’m tattling on each other, you see which is nothing but rumor rising. You see them back biting each other, you see them struggling over the toys with one another.

You know, there is a story that is known in Russia but it’s not known in this country. But Lennon in the early days of the formation of Communism was reported to have gone into a nursery and they’re watching kids behavior of taking the toys away from each other and feuding and fighting and fussing with each other. And he looked at his traveling companion and said, I don’t think this is ever going to work. In other words, a communistic viewpoint where everybody shares alike is never going to work when he observed the human nature of a child himself. So when we as Christians are out back biting each other, not forgiving each other, trying to destroy one another, don’t want to sit with somebody, we don’t want to do this with this person. What are we? Well, we’re acting like a bunch of babies. And that is the state, unfortunately our Christian world today as a whole, we’re a bunch of babies, we have never grown up. We’re still in this baby boomer stage where we’ve been born into an age where we think the world owes us the living where we think we’ve got rights, where everybody is a victim. That’s baby stuff. That’s baby thinking.

I was talking to a dear friend of mine yesterday, that there was a pastor and he was talking about how another pastor had studied some church growth principles in this type of deal. And it was talking about the what at appraisal of the baby boomer age that we’re that that we live in today and many of the people who are political positions today their out of that stage and how they’re they’re like, you said they’re babies, we’re spoiled brats and it gives him some characteristics and then said we adjust the church to meet these needs. And like my friend said, bologna, we need to tell those people to grow up and quit acting like babies. Now that’s what Paul did in Corinthians. He said I can’t address you as a man. I got to address you as a baby. You’re acting like a little baby. I got to go back and give you milk again, because you’re not ready for meat, you’re still a little child and he went. Why do you say that? Isn’t it true that you’re still bickering with each other? Playing one person against another. I follow Paul. I follow Apollos. I follow Peter that you’re still feuding, fighting and fussing with each other. There is no unity of purpose among you. That’s what babies do, baby. The young babies. Those two little boys of Debbie, they’re not sitting there thinking how to unify the household. They’re thinking about how to get your own way. That’s baby stuff. Is that expected of a baby? Yes, but I want to tell you something. Do you expect your baby to grow up? You better believe it. And your whole training is to get them grown up. Your goal is not to keep them a baby. your baby. Your goal is to have them grow up to mature and to become men. Now that’s what that is. What is going to have to occur after that’s the by-product of understanding who we are in Christ. And so Paul’s writing here was to get the Christians together and teach them how to act with love toward one another and he writes about the church, not a church building but the church that is made up of Christians through all of the ages.

So he addresses his letter, grace and peace to you from God, our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. And again, I just stop for a moment. You will see Paul very uncharacteristically using a term grace and peace to you in every one of his letters, Grace and peace, grace and peace. Whereby the typical salutation of an Israelite was shalom. Peace. Peace be unto you. Why did Paul never say shalom? He only said grace and peace because there is no peace apart from the grace of God. You got Israel over there, signing packs all over the place too. To get peace, don’t know, they’ll never be peace in Israel anymore than they’ll be any place else, until they accept the grace of God, that was given to them in and through Christ Jesus as their Lord, and my Lord. Never will there be peace.

And so he says, praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us and the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In other words, what is His goal for you and me? To make us holy and blameless in His sight. Could we do that ourselves? No. So He did it for us. That was a part of His choice in love. He predestined us to be what? Adopted as His sons 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 that He loves. Again, I believe that the emphasis there is to the Gentile and to the Israelite, but just as the Israelite was predestined to hear the gospel, so was the Gentile predestined to hear the gospel. And just as the Israelite was to be a natural son, the Gentile was predestined to be an adopted son, so that each and every one of us would receive full rights as we talked about in the Galatatians passage, full rights as sons of the Living God.

We’re going to continue on in Ephesians chapter 1 and we’re going to pick up in verse 7. In Him, that’s in Christ, now we have redemption, so we don’t get it. We have it. Now in order to have it, we have to get it but the way we got it was when we got Jesus. When Christ came to live within us, He had already accomplished that for us. So we are a redeemed person. In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. In accordance with the riches of our confession, is that what it says? No. It says in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished upon us with all wisdom and understanding.

My friends, you do not have forgiveness because of your confession. You do not have forgiveness because you go to confession booth. You do not have forgiveness because you 1st John 1:9, you do not have forgiveness because you go to a day of atonement. And you don’t have forgiveness because you just hope God forgives you. You have forgiveness, if you are in Him. When you step out of Adam and into Christ by faith, and Christ steps out of heaven into you, you are born again under the New Covenant and in that New Covenant, you have redemption and you have forgiveness of sins. Contrary to what is taught in most Christian teaching today, where we are asking and begging God to do what he’s already done. Instead of rejoicing in what He has already done, we are trying to get something and we construe that, as faith. Folks, faith is not asking God to give you what you don’t have. If I have been given everything that I need for life and godliness. If that has already been given to me, then how can faith be getting something that I don’t have? That is supposition but it’s not faith. Faith is resting in what you already have. Faith is rejoicing, enabling you to experience love and joy and peace in the fact that I’ve already received the peace of God that passes all understanding. Now access it. I’ve already got it. Now we keep thinking faith is I need a Cadillac, so I’ll ask God for a Cadillac and I’ll get it. We say praise God by faith, I got that. No it didn’t. Satan can give you a Cadillac. Has nothing to do with God at all. What we rejoice in and what true faith is is in what we have today, right now, as our inheritance and is if indeed what I have right now is my inheritance is everything that God thought that I needed that I’ve been given everything that I need for life and godliness, then how could faith be asking for more, asking for something else? That’s not faith. That is living as a baby, not realizing you have everything that you need, but being too dumb to realize it. And so we’re asking for more. As if we knew what we needed, God knew what I needed. I never have known what I needed. What I think I need is contrary to God most the time, God knows what I need. So what did he do? He gave me everything that I need now. What’s faith? Rejoicing in that, accessing it. Do I have forgiveness? Yes. Well, what, how am I gonna live? Enjoy, access it. rejoice in it, realize it, trust it, rejoice in it. That’s what faith is all about. I am a forgiven person. Do I deserve that? No. Am I worthy of that? Well, of course not. That’s why I can rejoice by faith in the fact that in the midst of my not deserving it, earning it, that God gave it to me. Now, when I realized that I’m not asking him for anything else.

And folks, that’s why when you come to understand the grace of God, your prayer life, probably as you’ve known it, will be annihilated. Because most of the time we equate prayer with something. Well, that’s, when I’m asking God to get what I don’t have, and that’s how we spend our life asking God, and then I think then that old person over there got something that they asked for. But I’ve never got what I asked for. So I guess I must have unconfessed sin in my life or some idiotic thing that we come up with. But why did they get it? And I did get it? See, you’re asking for the wrong motives that I have I already have. What did Paul pray for? Lord, I pray that I’ll have more boldness to proclaim. Did he already have the boldness in him? I’m sure, what was he praying for? That I’ll access that. He wouldn’t say, I want you to give me something new. He is already bold as brass. He just, he just wanted that to be accessed.

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I guess it’s somewhat like a computer. If you’ve got software in there you don’t have to beg for it, you just access it. But in an operation, that’s what true faith is, is taking, having a knowledge of what Christ has done for us and walking in it, accessing it. Has He done everything? Yes. Well then what is the only thing I can do? Rest. You know what it says? Rest from your works as God rested fromHis. Enter into the sabbath, what? Rest. In other words, folks, take a vacation, rejoice in who you are in Christ, rejoice in your identity in Christ, rejoice in your inheritance in Christ, rejoice in those things that God has given. You don’t have to feel guilty that you have those things anymore than an adopted child, when he’s about 10 or 11 and a natural kid comes up and says you all feel guilty because I was born in this family but you weren’t. We say, well, that may be true, but I have full rights as an heir and I’m a son, the same as you’re a son. I don’t have to feel guilty. Now, you may have people there wanting to put you on guilt trips. Just like the prodigal son’s brother certainly wanted to put that guy on a guilt trip because he didn’t deserve to have the fatted calf, and he didn’t deserve those things. Why here I’ve been wonderful and just been obeying you father all along and here you’re giving him a party, you haven’t given me one. Well what is that baby stuff. That’s immature baby mindsets, baby attitudes, and God wants us to grow up.

Now, it says that we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God’s grace (nothing we do), in accordance with the riches of His grace that He lavished upon us, lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. In other words, folks, I know that’s going to shock you, God knows, knew what He was doing. He did this with wisdom and understanding He really knows what He’s doing and we sit there and doubt that all the time. He didn’t know what he was doing when he lavished all his grace, why people were going to take advantage of that. So God must have made a mistake. He says, if they do, I’ll bring them back. You don’t have to sit around, little puny human that you are, you don’t have to sit around worrying about what I do with another person, I’ll take care of that and if they take grace as a license, believe me, I have the ability to bring him back to reality. So He knows what He’s doing. Now, it said He made known to us the mystery of His will according to what? His good pleasure which He purposed in Christ. So why did He make known to you and me the mystery, this mystery? Well there’s a duality to this mystery. First of all that the Israelite and Gentile alike had become sons. That was a mystery that was unthought of to the Israelite, that’s a mystery and that Christ in both of our hearts, Israelite and Gentile of our only hope of glory. That’s a mystery. That was a mystery and that when I was in dwelt, by His Spirit coming to live within me, and He placed me into His body, and He placed an Israelite into His body that we became a part of the same body. And therefore, now in Christ, there is no Israelite, Gentile, slave or free were just all one in Him. That’s a mystery. Now, He made that known to us in accordance with His good pleasure. In other words, it pleased Him to make that known to us. Unfortunate it didn’t please a lot of people that it was made known to, but it pleased Him to make that known which He purposed in Christ to be put in effect when the times have reached their fulfillment to bring all things in heaven and Earth together under one head and that is Christ Jesus. Isn’t that a marvelous passage of scripture.

Now last week we talked very briefly about the prodigal son and how that here was a son and and he he he received his adoption in advance, that’s like us. See we’ve, I’ve already got it. Now, there’s a part of that adoption and I’m still going to get as an example, the fulfillment of eternal life. But I already have eternal life but I will see that in its totality when I’m absent from the body and present with the Lord. The Bible tells me, I’m already seated in the heavenlies with Christ Jesus, which is mind-boggling. Someday I’ll see myself literally seated there. Right now I accept that by faith but like the prodigal son, he took his inheritance in advance and he went out like many of us and spent it. In other words, we take it for granted, we use our freedom in Christ to do things that God never intended, a son to do. And the reason the father didn’t want the son to do it, it’s because it wasn’t good for the son. But the son being a baby, immature, insensitive, dumb, no wisdom, we go out on our own like a spiritual nitwit and we spend up our inheritance as he did and squandered away our inheritance on wild living, prostitutes and find ourselves in a pig pen.

Now. When it comes to heaven, you can’t squander away your inheritance in as much as you’re going to lose something. That’s not the case. What you lose is the benefit of your inheritance. We already have our inheritance but we lose the benefit when we’re here on earth because of our mindset that takes advantage of what this inheritance is. Is that possible folks, for a Christian to do that? You better believe it. Did they lose their sonship when they did that? No, they did not. When it comes to the prodigal son, who even though he was a son decided to squander his inheritance. In other words, take advantage of it in advance and he went out to and living in this lascivious type of living, it says that he came to his senses. Now folks, if you’re a Christian and you’ve been in that type of a mindset, in other words, we’ve just ignored the truth of growing up in Christ. We’ve been ignoring that I don’t need to grow up. I just have all this grace, you’ve got to come to your senses. And what coming to your senses is is I need to grow up. I need to quit acting like a kid and grow up. In other words, it says, leave childish things behind and grow up. So it said he came to his senses. Now, when he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father’s hired men have food to spare? And here I am starving to death. What’s he saying? Well, I’m his son, but I’m starving to death and the people that work for dad have food to spare. So he set out a plan, I’ll set out and go back to my father and say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you and I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. But you see, he never was worthy to be called his son. Folks, there is an entrapment that Satan will use In a Christian’s mind. I’m no longer worthy to be called your Son. I’m no longer worthy to be in the ministry. I’m no longer worthy to be in church on Sunday with other believers. I’m no longer worthy to be preaching the gospel.

I have a very well-known Bible teacher and minister that would lead sometimes thousands of people at a time, that had an incident in his ministry where a family member had gotten involved in an indiscretion and because of that he deemed himself unworthy and sent out a letter to his constituents saying that I am going to drop away from the ministry for a while because I’m unworthy to be in it. And I wrote to him in a loving way, but I said to him, my dear friend, the fact that you said that you are unworthy because of what was done, makes me believe that you thought you were worthy, because of what you were doing. And my friend, you never have been worthy to be in the ministry. You never have been worthy to be a child of God only privileged. We, you never were worthy. Worthy is the Lamb, not the sheep. So, there are none of us who are worthy to be called a son of God. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son, there’s no one who is worthy to be called a son of God, because of what they do, or what they don’t do. God just made it that way. And so he said, I want you to make me like one of your hired men. Well, that’s what we get when we remember that it says, that we were alienated from God in our own minds because of our evil behavior. Not in the mind of God where we alienated because of our evil behavior, but in our minds. So here’s this son, knowing the slop that he had been in, and that has a tendency to annihilate your self-worth, if you’re building your self-worth upon what you’re doing or what the world might even say about you. But in the midst of that and as bad as that maybe, when you’re a son of God, you are never separated from His love. When you and I, if we go into the pigsty, we have to realize something, is that we’ve taken Jesus in there with us. And that is what brings us to our senses. Is this where I want Jesus to be? Do you think Jesus is saying wish Bob, we could go to the bar tonight together? I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s where he needs to be. And yet, that’s where we take him. When that’s where we decide we need to go. So, because of not understanding his sonship or else deny, he knew he was a son, but maybe I’m no longer worthy to be called it. I want you to hire me like one of the hired men, so he got up went to his father. And as The story goes while he was a long way off the father saw him, which means a father was continually looking for him, because you don’t see somebody a faraway off unless you are looking for them, and it said, his father was filled with compassion for him and so he ran to his son.

He threw his arms around him and kissed him and the son again, he had a speech prepared. So he wanted to give it to him. So he said, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son. The father didn’t even answer that statement. I’m sure that he knows as He knows if you’re struggling with this very issue right now. He knows that because of the circumstances of life, that’s probably what you’re thinking. But it’s interesting that he doesn’t even deal with that in words that he deals with counteracting that thought with action. Not with words. Just saying no, no son, that’s not true. I really love you but he acted upon that love and called to his servants saying, quick bring the best robe and put it on him and bring a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet and bring the fatted calf and kill it. And let’s have a feast and celebrate for this son of mine was dead. And is alive again! He was lost and found! Again we don’t understand sometimes, some of these things. But when he’s talking about putting a ring on his finger, he is talking about the identity as a family member, as this is my son.

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.