Romans – The Play Part 8, Ep 1

And that’s the next thing, that there is a steadfastness in His love. A steadfastness in His love. You faced not only what we just talked about, but you were sentenced to death. Your sentence was death. You lived in death. You were part of death. And death is so permanent. Your state in death is so utterly, totally permanent. God’s greatest enemy. What hope is there for you? It’s a hopeless situation. There was only one possibility, and that is that death… had to die. And in the awfulness of your sentence and condemnation to death, you ended up with the life of His Son. You didn’t end up being delivered from death. Praise the Lord. No, that’s not near where you ended up. You ended up with the life of His eternal Son. Praise the Lord.

Now that is really working out from a bad situation to a good situation, is it not? You’re living in death, and you end up with the life of His Son. Now, why did that happen? Why did it happen, brother? That’s for you. That’s right. Ken, He was for you.

And you know what else He did? He let your mind understand the cross. Praise the Lord. And then He put a spirit in you so you would intuitively know that that life was in you. So He came and met your needs intellectually and intuitively. You know why he did that? Because He was pulling for you from the very, very, very beginning. You are from the human race. And the human race, of which you are a son, was under the condemnation of death, and death reigned. And death reigned upon the human race, and there was no breaking it. Adam was living under condemnation, and so were you condemned in the presence of a living God. But God was for you. In the presence of death reigning, in the presence of death reigning, God was for you. Now think of death reigning. What good, how could He, what glory would come from that? I’ll tell you this, He was for you. Do you know how it ended up? That death no longer reigned.

Death no longer reigned. But because Christ came and dealt with death and dealt with Adam’s race and totally ended your relationship to Adam’s death in a terrible situation in the race you were in, God delivered you from that very race, put you into another race. And now do you know who reigns instead of death? You reign in the place of death. You reign in life. Hallelujah! Where death reigns, God works all things for good to you who love Him. And death was dethroned. And you reign in death’s place. Praise the Lord; that should impress you; be impressed. Amen. For those of you who are psychotically insecure, look at what came out of death’s reign. You reign in life in His life, and condemnation has ceased to exist. Death. And why did that happen? Because Ann, little bitty Ann, God was pulling for you, and so He annihilated death and caused you to reign. Praise the Lord.

It worked out okay. That’s not enough for you. You don’t understand, I lived in sin, I lived in sin. I was in sin. That’s right, you lived in sin, so the Lord thought up something, and you’re living right there in the middle of sin because He was for you. There you are living in sin; can you see you’re living in sin, you’re living in sin, outside of God and outside of hope in this world. And because He was pulling for you, He took you out of being a sinner and put you in Christ, and you know what else He did? He put you in Christ; though you had been dead and living in sin, in the eyes of God, He now sees you only in life. That’s the way He sees you, no longer in sin, but in Christ, in life. God always sees you alive.

Now, I want you to consider that at every moment that you live on this earth, God sees you alive in Christ. Alive in Him. Now, when He sees Christ, He sees Him alive and raised from the dead, living by the life of the Father. He looks around, and you’re inside Him. And you’re alive, living by that same life. And that’s how He sees you. And that’s what he did with your living in sin. Ended up living in Christ and in the eyes of God, living always in life. That was because God was pulling for you.

Brother, He was pulling for you. He was on your side. Are you clear?

‘But Gene, or maybe I should say Paul, you don’t understand. I have been a slave to sin. Every word and all orders and commands.’ You really are psychotic, aren’t you? The Father saw you enslaved to sin, a slave chained to sin and to sin’s bidding, so He didn’t just put you in Christ. You know what else he did? It’s very difficult to explain this. It’s very difficult to explain this in English because there’s just nothing in English that does this any good. He made you One With Christ. Indissolvable.

When he saw you in slavery, He did three or four things. Listen. First of all, He took you out of the slavery of sin and made you a slave to God. Amen. Boy, oh boy. That’s not an option you get. That’s what happened. You were made a slave to God. I don’t know how to express my own feelings about that, but that’s one of the most exciting things in the world, that I am enslaved to God, that is security, saints. I mean, that’s a lot better than any other state I can think of except this one. He made me one with Christ. And that is an indissolvable union and a union so perfect that it is indistinguishable. It is the dissolution of two things, making them one. You’re one with Christ.

And when He did this, He did something else. And there’s no word in the English language to explain this. He “holified” you. He “holified” you. You know what petrification means, where there is wood. It goes down into, I believe, a sodium solution. Is it sodium? I don’t know. Little by little, the wood goes away, and there is mineral deposited exactly in the same place. And little by little, there’s no wood, and it’s all limestone that replaces it. Well, that’s what he did with you. He kept taking the wood out. And he kept taking everything out until there was nothing left but His holiness. Praise the Lord.

He holified you. He sanctified you. Inside of Jesus Christ, He had to sanctify you to be able to make you one with him. Now, why did He do that? That’s right. I don’t know what more of a message we would expect from God than what has been delivered here. And yet someone says, ‘Gene, I am such a legalist by nature, I am just a legalist, I am so legalistic.’  Someone else says, ‘Paul, I am such a libertine, I am a libertine, I just live free of all things,’ and brothers and sisters, according to what we’ve learned, both are serving the tyrant, the tyrant of the law and the tyrant of the libertine, of being enslaved to the world’s liberty. Both are enslavement.

So, in this helpless, terrible situation, everything worked out for good. Dear brother, who is a legalist, I want you to know something. He sets you free from the law. All law. And He did me too. So, you cannot be a legalist, neither to me nor to you. You cannot bring me into the bondage of your legalism because I am free from all. He has fulfilled all law. He has destroyed my relationship and your relationship by the most powerful force in the universe other than the power of God Himself. He used another instrument; He used the finality of death. He used death to part you from the law. He parted you from the law, so that you live in two realms. The law lives in the realm of death; you live in the realm of life. Law can’t get to you; you can’t get to law.