12/16/07 – 50LAW - “Christ’s Human Nature“– Part 3
 
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Hello!  This is Richard Vaughn

Today’s message is “Christ’s Human Nature” Part 3

Before we begin, let us seek God’s guidance, “Heavenly Father, as we 
proceed in this important study pertaining to the human nature of Christ when He was here on earth; I pray that You bless those listening today with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, so that we may understand how Satan has deceived the Christian world into believing this lie regarding the nature of Jesus, that has lead to many other critical deceptions. We pray for wisdom, knowledge and understanding so that we may live in the center of Your revealed will, as we ask in Jesus Name, Amen.”

Right now, I continue to keep my pledge, to cry aloud and spare not, to lift up my voice like a trumpet and to show God’s people where they are transgressing God’s law.
Last week we continued our study on the human nature of Christ. This week we will continue with the fact that Jesus overcame in the same nature we possess. Had He not won the victory over Satan in the same nature we have, what encouragement could we draw from His victory? I did not need to be shown that it was possible for Adam not to yield to sin; I already knew that. What I need to know is that I can overcome sin, my nature being what it is. 

    Satan charged God with requiring something that couldn't be done. The reason fallen man could not produce obedience is clearly described in Romans 8:3, 4: "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." 
    These verses are simplified when we ask a few questions. What could the law not do for us because we were too weak in the flesh to keep it? It could not save us. 

    Because we could not keep it due to the weakness of the flesh, what did God do? He sent Jesus to obey the law perfectly in the flesh. He condemned sin in the flesh by total victory over it. 

    What did His victory in the flesh make possible for us? "That the righteousness (just requirement) of the law might be fulfilled in us." It enabled us to obey. 

    How did His victory in the flesh make it possible for us to obey? By the miracle of conversion, which changes our walk from the flesh to the Spirit. Then Christ in us, through the Spirit, imparts victory over sin to our lives. 

    These obvious truths point up one of the great problems in holding to the pre-fall human nature of Christ. If His victory over Satan, in the flesh, was for the purpose of enabling me to fulfill the requirements of the law, how could His victory help me at all if it was obtained in some other flesh than mine? Here is where this false doctrine strikes at the beautiful principle of righteousness by faith. 

    Righteousness by faith is the imputing and imparting of the results of His sinless life and atoning death. It includes both justification and sanctification. He imputes, or credits, to us the merits of His sinless experience to deliver us from the penalty of sin. This is justification. To deliver us from the power of sin, He does not merely reckon us as righteous, but He actually imparts the strength to overcome sin. In either case, He can only bestow upon us what He attained through His own incarnate experience as the Saviour of the world. 

    Some might claim that since justification only involves an imputing of Christ's sinless record to our account, it could be done in any kind of body. But is that true? The purpose of the incarnation was to redeem fallen man and not sinless man. To do so He had to "condemn sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3). Our sins that proceed from the flesh had to be condemned by Him, and the only way this could be done was to conquer that sinful flesh and submit it to the death of the cross. 
    Jesus came to take away the sin of the world, as John declared. How could He take away sin that was not even there in the flesh which He assumed? To be more precise, how could He "condemn sin in the flesh" in a sinless flesh?
    Paul said, "I am crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20). Why in Romans 6:3 does he further state that we "were baptized into his death?" Every sinner must pass, by faith, through the crucifixion and resurrection experience with Christ. In order to pass from death to life, every one of us must identify with the One who represented us as the second Adam. Our sins were in Him. When He died, we died; and the penalty against our sins was satisfied and exhausted. 

    Can't you see that He had to carry our own fallen nature to that cross in order to make it possible for our sinful nature to be put to death? Anything less would have failed to satisfy the justice of God. Christ had to surrender condemned humanity to the full wages of sin on that cross in order to make atonement possible for us. Otherwise, we could not identify with Him or be crucified with Him. Obviously, redemption requires that Jesus live and die with the nature of fallen man in order to provide the vital link of justification. 

    Now let us look at the requirements of sanctification and how we participate in Christ’s victory. Sanctification is not a mere crediting or accounting. It is the imparting of something to us. Just as He imputes justification to deliver us from the guilt of sin, He now imparts sanctification to deliver us from the power of sin. What is the sanctification He imparts? It is our actual participation in the victory of Christ over sin. By faith we enter into and appropriate the strength of the victory He experienced in the flesh. In other words, He is able and willing to live out in us the same overcoming life that He lived as a man on this earth. He will reproduce in us His own sinless experience. This is sanctification. 

    If Jesus came into the world with Adam's unfallen nature in order to manifest a sinless life, how could that unfallen nature be reproduced in me? Participating in Adam’s unfallen experience does not sanctify fallen men. They are sanctified by overcoming sin in their fallen nature through the same power Jesus used in overcoming sin. There is no way for us to participate in the unfallen experience of Adam. If that is the means by which Jesus overcame Satan, there is no way for Him to impart it to me. But if Jesus gained the victory over Satan in the fallen nature of Adam's descendants, then I can participate in it with Him. That kind of victory can be superimposed upon my own life, because it was gained in the same nature I possess.
 
    A sinless experience, lived in some alien, unfallen nature, could not be credited to me, nor could it ever be possessed by me. Fallen nature can never, in this life, be restored to the state of unfallen man. But we may receive the victory over sin that Jesus gained in the flesh as one of us. 

In this connection it is interesting to study the short-lived history of a group of Christians in Indiana who claimed to have holy flesh. Around the year 1900 a rather large body of conservative church members became obsessed with the idea that Jesus lived His sinless life in the nature of unfallen Adam. 

    Assuming, correctly, that His victorious experience in the flesh could be imparted to every Christian through faith, they began to teach that fallen man could live out the very same untainted life of sinless Adam. This fanatical view led them to believe that they could reproduce the absolute holiness and perfection of unfallen Adam. This is just one well-documented example of the ramifications of this false teaching. 

    The other extremity to which men are led by accepting the error of Christ's pre-fall nature is exactly the opposite of the "holy flesh" theory. They simply assert that since Jesus overcame in Adam's sinless nature, we cannot possibly hope to share His victory while still in bodies of sinful flesh. Christ could only impart what He had to give, and since He had no victory over sin in our fallen nature, He could not share it with us. Therefore, it is impossible to overcome as Christ overcame, leading such a deluded soul to believe they will go on sinning until Jesus comes. 

    Thus, we can see how the beautiful, basic truth of sanctification is downgraded and removed from the experience of righteousness by faith. Already we have seen how the "original sin" error has generated two other perversions; namely, that Jesus had the unfallen nature of Adam, and that sanctification cannot be imparted to man by Jesus. In fact, most proponents of original sin do not even believe it is possible to overcome all sin in this life. They deny the repeated assertions of Scripture that fallen man can actually partake of the divine nature of Christ. Somehow they cannot perceive and accept the heavenly mystery, so often affirmed in the Bible, that Jesus took man's fallen nature upon Him and, yet, was never guilty of sin. To them the inherited guilt of Adam is so pervasive in human nature that it can only be overcome when translation takes place at the coming of Christ. 

Well time is up for this week. Next week we will conclude our study in God’s Word regarding “Christ’s Human Nature“– Part 4. I hope you are aware that week after week I expose many of the deceptions that Satan holds Christendom captive with. Why; because Satan wants you to be lost. 4 Times in Matthew 24, Jesus said that in the time of the end that deception will be rampant in the Christian world. My dear listeners, are you aware that deception paralyzes the Christian church today and that Christianity is in a serious apostasy? Keep listening each week and the truth will set you free if you are open to hearing and responding to the truth. 
If you would like to worship with seventh day Sabbath-keepers, come to the Victory Everlasting Gospel Church at our new location at the Hampton Inn Conference suite in South Hill, VA at the exit 12 interchange of Interstate 85. We meet at 9:15 am each Saturday the Lord’s Day and we will be meeting there until out new building has been completed. 
Look, if you have been listening to these broadcasts for any length of time, you know Saturday is God’s Sabbath and He’s calling you to start keeping it holy. Why not begin this week?
Until next week, Jesus said in John 5:39, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me”. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

TEN
Living Without Sin
    Is it hard for us to believe that Jesus in His humanity could maintain an absolutely pure, sinless mind during His 33 1/2 years in this world Is it possible for anyone in human flesh, even under the power of God, to reach such a point of victory over sin The Bible answer is clear: "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God) … Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:3–5). 
    This promise is made concerning sinners in the flesh who turn to the delivering power of the gospel. How much more would our blessed Lord, with no acquired propensities for sin, be able to claim His Father's enabling strength to keep from sinning! The Word of God assures us that we may partake of the divine nature of Jesus and have the "mind of Christ." His sinless experience in the flesh is a guarantee that any of us may have the same victory if we will depend upon the Father as He did. 
    This means that in overcoming sin He had no advantage over us. He fought the enemy in the same nature and by the same spiritual weapons that are available to us. If He had any advantage over other men it was simply that His inherent human nature was never further debilitated by personal indulgence in sin. 
    Can we equal the perfect pattern of Jesus' sinless life No. All of us have degraded human nature further by giving way to the flesh. Not only have we brought the curse of death upon ourselves by breaking God's law, but we have also made ourselves more vulnerable to Satan by cooperating with him. Jesus never responded to a single sinful stimulus, and Satan could find nothing in Him. He lived all His life with the surrendered mind and will of the fully sanctified. He committed no sins to be atoned for. 
    But even though we cannot equal the pattern, we should seek earnestly to reflect that holy life of Jesus as fully as possible. By the grace of God, we may put away every known sin and be perfect in our sphere with no consciousness of cherished wrongdoing. 
    Does that mean we will be boasting about living without sin On the contrary, the closer we come to Christ, the more we will sense our unworthiness. Those who attain the standard of Christ will be the last ever to recognize it, much less boast of it. Is it important that God have an obedient people at the end of time that He can point to as a vindication of His character The Bible reveals that the whole cosmic conflict between God and evil can be traced to Satan's original desire to take God's place and rule the universe. It was his program of false accusation that stirred up rebellion in heaven and alienated a third of the angels. Satan misrepresented God's character and charged the Creator with making unreasonable and impossible demands. 
    How could the devil be proven wrong God had to provide a demonstration that would forever silence the adversary. It was a long, painful demonstration that led the mighty Creator God to step down into a human body of fallen man and, within the limits of that nature, to overcome everything Satan could hurl against Him. Had He utilized any divine power to overcome sin that was not available to others in the flesh, Satan would have used it to bolster his claims that no one could keep God's law. 
    At the cross, Jesus demonstrated to the entire universe that Satan was wrong. He had proven that it was possible, in the flesh, to be obedient through dependence on the Father. The final step of vindication will take place when the character of Christ has been reproduced in that persecuted little remnant that remain faithful through the firestorm of Armageddon and beyond. Long after Satan's knee has bowed to acknowledge the righteousness of God, and eons after he and his followers have tasted the eternal consequences of their sin, the 144,000 will still be bearing witness to the honor and integrity of God's government. As their new song of victory and deliverance is heard by listening angels, unfallen worlds, and the unnumbered multitude of the saints, all will unite in an oratorio of praise, saying, "Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen" (Revelation 7:12). 
    It is easy to understand why that little group who sing the song of Moses and the Lamb will be so signally honored as they stand nearest to God's throne. It is through their experience that God's character will be vindicated at last. 
    In summary, we can see how the ancient error of Adam's imputed guilt has led to a chain of related deceptions. The most significant truths of salvation have been cleverly counterfeited. The humanity of Jesus has been denied, the imparted righteousness of Christ has been challenged, and the possibility of victory over sin has been ridiculed. It is only as we recognize the basic falsehood that we can avoid the perversions that follow. May God give us the wisdom to stand firmly upon the word alone and to reject every doctrine that is not rooted in Him.
Well time is up for this week. Next week we will continue our study in God’s Word regarding “Christ’s Human Nature“– Part 2. I hope you are aware that week after week I expose many of the deceptions that Satan holds Christendom captive with. Why; because Satan wants you to be lost. 4 Times in Matthew 24, Jesus said that in the time of the end that deception will be rampant in the Christian world. My dear listeners, are you aware that deception paralyzes the Christian church today and that Christianity is in a serious apostasy? Keep listening each week and the truth will set you free if you are open to hearing and responding to the truth. 
If you would like to worship with seventh day Sabbath-keepers, come to the Victory Everlasting Gospel Church at our new location at the Hampton Inn Conference suite in South Hill, VA at the exit 12 interchange of Interstate 85. We meet at 9:15 am each Saturday the Lord’s Day and we will be meeting there until out new building has been completed. 
Look, if you have been listening to these broadcasts for any length of time, you know Saturday is God’s Sabbath and He’s calling you to start keeping it holy. Why not begin this week?
Until next week, Jesus said in John 5:39, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me”. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

Well time is up for this week. Next week we will continue our study in God’s Word as week after week we expose many of the deceptions that Satan holds Christendom captive with.
If you would like to worship with seventh day Sabbath-keepers, come to the Victory Everlasting Gospel Church at our new location at the Hampton Inn Conference suite in South Hill, VA at the exit 12 interchange of Interstate 85. We meet at 9:30 am each Saturday the Lord’s Day and will be meeting there until out new building has been completed. 
Look, if you have been listening to these broadcasts for any length of time, you know Saturday is God’s Sabbath and He’s calling you to start keeping it holy. Why not begin this week?
Until next week, Jesus said in John 5:39, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me”. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

Well time is up for this week. Next week we will continue our study in God’s Word regarding “Christ’s Human Nature“– Part 3. I hope you are aware that week after week I have been exposing the many deceptions that Satan holds Christendom captive with. Why? Simply because Satan wants you to be lost. 4 Times in Matthew 24, Jesus said that in the time of the end that deception will be rampant in the Christian world. My dear brothers and sisters, are you aware that deception has a stranglehold on the Christian church today and that Christianity is in a most serious apostasy? Keep listening each week and the truth can set you free if you are open to hearing and responding to those truths. 
If you would like to worship with seventh day Sabbath-keepers, come to the Victory Everlasting Gospel Church at our new location at the Hampton Inn Conference suite in South Hill, VA at the exit 12 interchange of Interstate 85. We meet at 9:15 am each Saturday the Lord’s Day and we will be meeting there until out new building has been completed. 
Look, if you have been listening to these broadcasts for any length of time, you know Saturday is God’s Sabbath and He’s calling you to start keeping it holy. Why not begin this week?
Until next week, Jesus said in John 5:39, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me”. Even so, come Lord Jesus.