By Scotty Todd

It is important that we understand the precious things that the Lord has done for us, but there is a key we must have or we’ll never understand them.  So I want to start off with I Corinthians 15.

I Corinthians 15:1-4

1: Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;

2: By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

3: For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

4: And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

                Notice that he’s talking about the gospel.  Secondly, he delivered to them what he had received.  That’s a good way to preach.  It’s hard to deliver something you haven’t received yourself.  Often preachers will just preach someone else’s message, and it’s bad.  Because of the pressures of time and having to have something new and exciting to preach all the time, preachers will get magazines and tapes just to get a message, and what they’re preaching has not gripped them.  In order for what you’re preaching to grip someone else, it has to first grip you.  So Paul says, “I’ve delivered to you what’s gripped me: How Christ died for our sins (that is, because of our sins), and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day.”  Now, that is the gospel that Paul preached: the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.  And there are many, many things contained in all of that.

                But it’s important that we understand about the death and burial, because that’s what did away with your old man.  If you have a translation that uses the phrase “sinful nature”, you need to cross that out and write “flesh” there.  Born-again man does not still have a sinful nature.  Man has only one nature at a time.  The nature has to do man’s origin and the highest part of him, that is, in the spirit.  “Nature” is always a spiritual thing.  Many translations use “sinful nature” instead of “flesh”, but you need to write “flesh” over that because that is what is in the Greek.  The original language does not say “sinful nature”; it says “flesh”.  The only reason I share that with you is because that’s why so many people have a concept that man has a dual nature. It is not scriptural.  Man’s spirit has always been the container of a nature.  And you cannot have two natures in the same container.  Those natures are “darkness” and “light”. You cannot have darkness and light in you at the same time.  Before Christ you were full of darkness, but when Christ came into your life, the light dispelled the darkness.

                I John 1:5 says, “God is light and in him is no darkness at all”.  That phrase “in him” refers to our union with him.  “In union with him” there is no darkness at all.  We are new creations “in him”, created “in Christ Jesus” by virtue of the life of God which is the light.  His life is the light of men.  So the light has come into our spirit, our innermost being, so therefore, we are not a duality.

                What we do have is an unrenewed mind, and a flesh with the law of sin working in it.  We have the law of sin in our flesh, but we do not have two natures.

THE FIRST BENEFIT IS FORGIVENESS

                The scripture says of the resurrection of Christ that “we were raised up together with him”.  The first benefit of our being raised is that we are forgiven. The whole world is forgiven.  The whole world is not saved, but the whole world is forgiven.  They have to first believe it.  There is eternal salvation through an eternal sacrifice, but in order for that to function , there must be belief.  “This is the will of the Father who sent me, that all who see the Son, and believe, will experience eternal life.”  When a person sees, but does not believe, they do not experience eternal life.  It is by grace, through faith that we are saved.

                In I Corinthians 15:1 Paul said, “I preached it and you received it.”  Unless you receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, you cannot reign in life through Christ Jesus.  Receiving is believing.  It’s the same thing.  He said, “You received what I preached to you.”  What does that mean?  It means, “You believed what I preached to you.”

                It’s important to understand that there must be faith in order to experience what he’s done by his grace.  I believe that God sent the “Faith Message” so that we would be able to receive what he has done for us.  Now some people went to preaching on “faith” itself, instead of preaching Christ, and it became a “man” message.  And I was in the “faith” arena in the 70s and 80s.  What the Lord began to show me was that you could have faith to move mountains, but not have the nature of Christ (which is love).  So I began to focus on the nature of Christ, and God gave me some balance in that.  So I saw that faith is really just simply believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is from Him that we our riches.  All of our riches come out of Him; it’s not by our working our faith more and more and more and more.  It’s just simple, simple faith in the person and finished work of Christ.

NO MORE WRATH

                So the first benefit is forgiveness.  The whole world is forgiven.  We were justified by his resurrection.  In fact, He was not raised until we were justified.  Until we were declared “not guilty”.  You’ll find that in Romans 4:25.  Then in the next chapter Paul says, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  He says we have peace with God.  That is not talking about the quietness and the comfort and the rest we have in the Holy Spirit.  It’s talking about the fact that God is not angry anymore; there is no wrath; there is nothing against us.  We are justified, declared not guilty, justified, and therefore there is reconciliation through faith.

                Now we have to believe that in order to experience it.  This would be a good place to talk about repentance.  The Greek word translated repentance is “metanoia”.  “Meta”, to change, and “noia”, the mind.  Repentance is often preached as asking for forgiveness and feeling bad about what you’ve done. Metanoia really has nothing at all to do with feelings.  It means you see some truth and you change your mind about it.  I can preach all kinds of good things to you, but if you don’t change your mind about it, you’ll never experience it.

                In Luke 24:47 Jesus says I want you to go preach “repentance and remission of sins”.  KJV uses the word “and” but in the Greek it’s “repentance unto”.  In other words, it is repentance that is needful, that is a change of mind is needful, or you will not experience forgiveness.  It doesn’t  mean that you’re not forgiven.  It has nothing to do with the reality of what God has already done.  It’s a done deal whether you believe it or not.  Some people still don’t believe we went to the moon.  Some people don’t believe that Jesus died for them and as them.  Some people don’t believe that Jesus went to hell.  But it doesn’t make any difference whether we believe it or not.  It’s all still true.  But until we change our mind about it we will not be able to experience it.

WE ARE MADE RIGHTEOUS

                Romans 5:19 says, “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”  What Adam did flooded into all mankind.  It says by his act “many were made sinners.”  Speaking of the obedience of Christ, however, it says, “many shall be made righteous.”  It doesn’t just say, “many were made”, but “many shall be made”.  Why?  It’s contingent upon your believing it. When you believe it you are made righteous.  First you were justified, then you were made righteous.  Two separate things.  Justified is legal.  It means you were legally declared “not guilty”.  Then you were made righteous by virtue of the very life of God coming into you.  His righteousness is not only imputed, but imparted to your spirit.  We are righteous and we have a nature that is righteous.  II Corinthians 5:21 says, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”  In him we are righteous.   A person outside of him cannot be righteous, that’s why they cannot be saved, because they are not righteous. 

WE ARE MADE ALIVE

                In I John 5 he talks about God’s record.  It’s not just talking about what’s “on the books”, but it’s talking about His testimony concerning His Son.  His testimony to us is that life is in His Son.  Then he says in 5:12 that whoever has the Son has the life.  We were made alive by Christ coming into our spirit.  He made us alive.  We were made alive.  We were a container that held darkness, and now we are a container full of life, a container full of the most holy God.  That has taken place in our spirit. There is coming a time of resurrection of the body, but a resurrection has already taken place and we are now “made alive” through the obedience of one man, Jesus Christ.  It’s not because we earned it or achieved it.  It’s not because we were in church every Sunday.  God’s not giving medals for that kind of stuff.  There is only one person who one the medal, and we all won in Him.  Now we’re going back around the track to find out how we won.

WE ARE MADE FREE

                What are we free from?  Free from condemnation! John 5:24 says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”  The word “condemnation” here is also translated “judgment”. Whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ will not come into judgment.  Why? Because he has already passed from death to life.  Because life is in you, the judgment is over. Because Christ’s judgment was your judgment.  It’s not that you escape the judgment of God – YOU WERE JUDGED in Christ.

                We need to know the reality of this fact: there is no more judgment for those who are in Christ.  But we have been told to flee the wrath to come.  There is a wrath to come, but not on us. There is a judgment to come, but not on us.  We don’t need to worry about that.

                I John 4:17 says, “This is the confidence that we have in the day of judgment – that as he is, so are we in this world.”  Because we have accepted, by faith,  the finished work of Christ, God has identified us with Him and we have been crucified with him.  We have already met our judgment in him.  We have already gone to hell in him.  Because if it didn’t happen to us in him, you have to have all those things for yourself.

                Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment … so Christ…”  So Christ came and took a body of flesh so that he could go to judgment for us and as us and go to hell for us and as us so that we would not have to go for ourselves.  So he went through my judgment and my hell…he didn’t go through hell for himself.  He went through my hell.  Thank God that’s over.  That’s a done deal.  My hell is in the past.  My judgment is in the past! 

                Who is he that condemns?  It is God that justifies.  Who is he that would try to put anything on my account?  It is Jesus that has died…oh! he has been resurrected (Rom. 8:31-34). 

                I want to show you some interesting scriptures in John 3.  This will help you understand that people in the world, though they are forgiven, are not saved.  Verse 15 says, “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish…” What if you don’t believe on him?   It’s not God’s will that any man should perish, but that all should come to repentance, to a change of mind.  Verse 16 says again, “that whosoever believeth in him should not perish…”  Verse 17 says, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” Now this next is the critical verse, “He that believeth on him is not condemned…” He that believes on him is not judged.  Thank God that’s over! “But he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”  What we’ve been taught all our life is those people out there in the world, they just need to change their life, get their act together.  I wish the church would quit teaching the world to upgrade the old man. 

                You know, we do more harm than good.  We teach people to change their behavior and make them think that they can be saved by their good works.  I know this is bold, but we make a mistake when we try to teach people to quit sinning.   The truth is that the only sin they are guilty of before God is the failure to believe that Jesus is their atonement.  He is not holding sin against the world.  I don’t care how bad it is.  He is not holding one sin against them.  If Adolph Hitler went to hell it was not for killing people, it was for refusing to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

                We try to get people “right”.  Well, the only way you can be “right” is to be in Him.  We need to quit telling people in the world about their behavior and tell them instead about how Jesus loved them and died for them.  We need to leave their behavior and manner of life out of it.  The heartbeat of God is to let people know that He loves them. 

                When I was asking the Lord the other day what he wanted me to share, He said to me, “I want them to see me and I want them to know me.”  The reason the church preaches to the world that they need to change their act is because that’s what we’re forever trying to do ourselves.  Because we’ve been taught to do that.  And we begin to preach what something that’s not even happening with us.  But we’ve been told that for so long, and we believe the “authorities”.   They tell us, “You need to clean up your life.”  So we tell the world, “Clean up your life and God will love you.”   

The reason that wrath will be on people in the future is because they have not believed.  They are condemned already.  John 3:36 says, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.”  That word “abide” is the Greek word “meno”.  It’s the same word used for “let my word abide in you”, and “if you abide in the vine then you’ll bear much fruit”.  It’s talking about something that is connected.  And what is connecting the wrath of God with mankind, even though they have been reconciled from God’s point of view….see there is wrath abiding on the world.  That’s why they feel uncomfortable when they get in church.  Or if you’ve got enough gospel working in you, they’ll feel uncomfortable around you, yet if you love them they’ll also feel accepted.  It’s sort of like the woman at the well of Samaria, after talking with Jesus, she says, “Come see a man who told me all the bad things I’ve done.” And she was excited about it!   He told me, “I know you’re thirsty.  You’re going through one relationship after another.  You’re in a mess.  But if you knew who it was that was talking to you.”  Who was it?  It was God, in the flesh, talking with people.

                We get such high and lofty ideas sometimes about walking with God.  Did you ever consider some of the things those disciples said and did, walking with God manifest in the flesh.  John heard somebody preaching that didn’t follow with them, so he said, “We need to close that denomination down!”  Then he wanted to call down fire on Samaria.  Here’s Jesus, come to save the world, and John wants to call down fire on them.   And those disciples were young men, some of them.  You think God doesn’t know what’s going on in the hormones in a young man’s body at that age?   You think Jesus didn’t know what they were thinking when they passed a good looking woman while they were walking along with him? God was there in the flesh and never once to you find him saying, “Hey, hold on a minute here! I’m God, don’t you be thinking that around me!!”

                God is not nearly as scared of our behavior as we are.  Because He knows that if we can ever see the light and draw from Him, behavior will just begin to change in the right way.  When  to the Lord and say, “Lord I missed it.”  He says, “Yeah, I already know, but I’m glad you came to me because I’ve already done something about that. I’ve just glad you’ve come to the light! Just don’t stay away from me so long! “

                We are free from condemnation, we are free from God’s wrath.   We are also free from the curse of the law.  Galatians 3 say that we have been delivered from a curse!  Being under the law is being under a curse! When you’re under the law, you’re immediately cursed!  (I’m talking about the Mosaic Law).  That’s why Jesus had to become a curse for us, so that the blessing of Abraham might come on us.  So Jesus became a curse for us.  Romans 8:2 says the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.  “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did in sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.”  In his body, in his flesh, on the cross, sin was condemned!  Why? So that the righteous requirements of the Law might be met in us who do not walk any longer according to the flesh.  For those who mind the things of the flesh, well they just keep thinking about flesh.  That’s why he says, “Get your mind off of your flesh.”  In Romans 7 he says, “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwells no good thing.”  Now, if God says there is no good thing in your flesh, quit trying to live by that. Be in union with Christ.  To be carnally minded is to be flesh minded.  You’ve always got your mind on you and your behavior.  If you’ll mind the things of the spirit, you’ll reap everlasting life!  I could get excited about this!

                The last thing is we’ve been made free from the law of sin.  I’m making a distinction between the Law of Moses and the law of sin.   If you’ll read Romans 7 you’ll find out that Paul says, “I want to do good, but I just don’t have the power to do it.”  He said, “I want to do good in my inward man, but I see another law in my members…” That’s the law of sin that we’re talking about.  He said, “My inward man agrees with the Law and it’s judgments. So it’s no longer me (the real me – the inward man), but it’s sin dwelling in my members.”  Then he says, “O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thank God! Through Jesus Christ!”

                This is really a gross picture.  In ancient history, they would take people who had done wrong and tie a corpse to their physical body until that corruption in that dead body would bring death to them.  And what Paul is saying is that there is something strapped to me, the new creation in Christ.  And he was saying, who is going to help me get free from this thing that’s tied to me?  Many translations say, “Thank God, it has been done by Christ.”

                Colossians 2:11-14 says that when Jesus body was put on the cross, his spirit was separated.  What God did was he circumcised the body of Jesus and made it the container of sin to be judged.  God made a distinction and judged sin in the flesh of Jesus.  And God wants you to know there is a difference between who you are and what you live in.  See the circumcision they practiced for all those years was looking forward to the true circumcision, the cutting away of the body of flesh that gave us so much trouble. There was a separation of spirit and body, inward man and outward man, so that God now deals with us according to who we are in him.  Flesh and blood will never inherit the kingdom of heaven.  The realm of God; the dimension of God. What does happen in this physical body is in Romans 8:11, “The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead will quicken this mortal body by his spirit that lives in us.”  The physical body has the law of sin in it.  That’s why it keeps getting sick and you have to get healed.

                Children of God must understand: you are not 160 pounds of meat! You are a new creation in Christ Jesus and when you talk to God, he listens.  And the real you, the spirit man, has to have this body in good health so that you can get around.  Quit looking at yourself as a body – you are a new creation in the spirit.  You came out the bowels of God!  You’ve got the very life of God in your spirit – the very substance of the same life as Jesus has is in your spirit. Light is in you! Heaven is in you! Holiness is in you! You are righteous!  You are just as righteous as God himself in your spirit! You are the offspring of God!  He was pregnant in hell with you, and when he was birthed out of there, you were birthed out of there with him.  When he was made alive, you were made alive with him.

                One day we’re going to realize this.  “From henceforth know no man according to the flesh.” I refuse to know you after the flesh.  When we see people in a moment of anger and frustration, it might have just been their dirt overcame them.  We don’t know what people have been through. We don’t have the right to judge, when he took all judgment. 

                The law of sin that is in your members will war against you until you understand what’s been done in Christ.  God doesn’t want you to sweep everything under the rug and say, well it’s all right.  No it’s not all right. The reason you’re losing battles is because you’re not resting in the Lord.  As we are resting in the Lord, in his holiness and his acceptance of us, then more and more we are experiencing the burial of the old man and the resurrection of the new man.  When you went into the waters of baptism, that same flesh did not come back out.  When Jesus went into death with our sin, he did not come out the same person.  The person that went into the tomb with our sickness and torment on his body – when life hit that body there wasn’t one sickness, disease or anything ungodly there.  Don’t look at yourself according to the flesh.  Don’t look at anyone else according to the flesh.

                Let me finish with this. Sometimes it really bothers me how cavalier people are.  It really bothers me when people are careless with this.  This message is life-changing.  And I hate to see people careless about it.  I know a lady that was almost dead with cancer.  I gave her the Word and she believed the Word and God healed her. She got lethargic and left church.  I called her up and told her, “You need to be in fellowship with us.  You need to be hearing the Word.”  She said, “I know I ought to be there and I don’t really have a good excuse.  I just don’t feel like going.” 

                About two months later she called me, crying.  She said, “Scotty, the cancer’s come back.”  She had been healed to the point that they could not find cancer in her body.  But now it had come back. I said, “Okay, we’ll come to you or you can come to us and we’ll pray again.”  The upshot of it was this.  She said, “Scotty, I’m just tired.”  She was losing weight and was feeling bad.  I said, “I understand. Do you want to go home?”  She said, “Yeah.”  I said, “I will be with you until you depart.”  And I was. She was only 56 years old.  That’s still mighty young.  I know what I’m preaching works, but you’ve got to believe it.  You’ve got to at least be willing.  You’ve got to believe God loves you.

                Father, what a joy and a privilege it is to preach this to your people.  I love them, but there’s no way I can love them the way that you love them. You know that we are growing up into you in all ways. Where our love for you begins to get shallow, You grasp us and hold us to yourself all the more.  And I thank you for that.  May we apprehend that with which we’ve been apprehended. Amen