33: Identity: Part 3, New Covenant P.A.C.T. (Compilation Series)

[00:00] Stephanie: Welcome to the On the Trail podcast. In this week’s compilation episode, we are revisiting part three of the identity series with an emphasis on the new covenant identity. All right, well, we are in the midst of a long trek through the topic of identity. We looked at attachment based identity. Now we’re looking at belief based identity where we examine how the kosmos is trying to shape us.

And last episode we started talking about how the kingdom defines us with a look at our new covenant identity. So today we’re pushing into that with a look at the first letter of an acrostic P-A-C-T, Pardoned. Let’s get super basic, Father. What does that mean? What are we pardoned from?

[00:45] Marcus: We’re pardoned from sin. It’s in the angelic announcement to Mary when Jesus is going to be born to save people from their sins. So pardon is the word that I use to cover that whole idea of being saved from our sins. We’ll look at that from a number of different angles, but that’s the basics.

[01:07] Stephanie: Okay, and I might have jumped too quickly. Maybe you should give just a really quick refresher for people. What is PACT?

[01:15] Marcus:  So PACT is our four buckets for helping us remember the “who I am in Christ” statements in the Bible. And so it’s pardon, adoption, citizenship, and title. And the title is saint. We’re going to be looking at pardon. And honestly, the passage that jumps out to me first when I think about this is Colossians 2:15, where Jesus is on the cross. And the Greek word there actually has the idea that there is a document of debt of all the accusations. I picture it this way, the devil has written out all of his accusations against us and everything he says we owe.

And you think of how often the Bible uses debt and sin interchangeably. It’s the same idea here. So there’s this document of debt that has been written against us. The devil’s written out everything that he can claim against us in the courtroom of heaven. They owe this, they owe this, they owe this. And it says that that document has been nailed to the cross.

And on the bottom when a document of debt was fulfilled and there was no more debt to be paid, in Greek they would write the word Tetelestai, which means it is finished, it is done. And that’s what we’re told in the Bible Jesus did when the documented debt was nailed to the cross. It was taken away and Satan has no more accusation against us because all of those accusations were dealt with at the cross. And the Greek word there means erased. It’s like his charges against us have been erased. They can’t stand because of what Jesus did at the cross.

And so this is the foundation of the whole concept of pardon. Isn’t that good news? That what Jesus did on the cross is he took care of the sin problem. Now we can lean into that or we can still act as if that didn’t happen. We can act as if there’s a disconnect for a lot of us on the full significance of that. But that’s the passage for me that made this whole idea the clearest because it was very visual for me. It’s a document, here’s all the debt and Tetelestai, it is finished, it is done, and it’s taken care of.

And so what that means is whenever I come to God my sins are already forgiven because I’m in Christ. And so what I am doing when I come, is I am confessing those sins saying about them what God is saying about them. And I am receiving forgiveness, which is kind of like forgiving myself by receiving that forgiveness. And some of us get stuck on both of those things. We get stuck because we don’t confess and when we don’t confess our sins it’s usually because we’re justifying it, or we’re denying that it’s actually a sin. Well, I didn’t really do anything wrong. It was actually their fault that this happened. In other words, that’s not confession. We have to own what we’ve done.

And it’s not that we’re not forgiven until we do, it’s that we don’t experience freedom from our bondage until we do. So let me jump to the Lord’s Prayer for a second, because one of these passages that has bothered me for a long time was the Lord’s Prayer, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And then afterwards it says, unless you forgive debtors from your heart, your Heavenly Father won’t forgive you your debts.

And I’m like, what? Because what that meant as a kid reading that, I’m like, so if I don’t forgive everybody for everything God’s not going to forgive me. Which translated to that I don’t get into heaven. But that’s not what that’s saying.

What that’s saying is if I don’t forgive people the way that God has forgiven me, then God’s not going to forgive me in the sense that I’m going to stay in my spiritual and emotional bondage. I’m not going to be set free. I’m not going to experience the freedom that forgiveness gives. And so again, the word forgive here like we talked about last week about grace, that there’s a semantic range and there’s context and all the rest of it. There is a forgiveness that is ours in Christ that is related to this document where everything is taken care of.

But then there is this experiential forgiveness that involves relationship. In other words, I have to confess to you, you offer me forgiveness, and I receive it. There’s this process that has to happen experientially, but that’s different from the legal transaction that took place at the cross which says sin has been taken care of.

[05:55] Stephanie: Yeah, this is very important stuff to understand. So on that note, there are many churchy terms that get associated with pardon.

[06:08] Marcus: That is the technical term, “churchy.”

[06:10] Stephanie: Yeah, churchy. I mean, there’s a whole debate that goes on about how much do you take the churchiness out of the terms and explain. And how much are you like no, you should learn what these words mean. And I thought it’d be nice to bring some of that together and say, okay, what are some of these churchy words and what do they mean?

[06:29] Marcus: Well, probably the two biggest churchy words are justification and sanctification. I don’t know the last time that either of those words ever came up in everyday conversation anywhere because we don’t talk like that anymore. But for justification, there’s three words that I use related to explaining pardon. There’s justification, there’s purification, and there’s sanctification. And I may have redemption in there too, so I’ve got four words when it comes to explaining what’s happened with our pardon, and they each have a different context.

So justification, the context is a courtroom. Purification, the context is kind of our life and sin functionally in my life. Sanctification, the context is worship. Then redemption, the context is a slave market.

And so each of these in a sense is a metaphor that explains what it is that God accomplished in our lives when he pardoned us of our sins. So starting with justification, that’s the courtroom one. And I think of this like a coin that has two sides to it. So justification side one is that this debt has been erased, right? It’s the document picture from Colossians 2:15 where this document has been taken care of and there is no more owed.

Our debt has been paid. And in this sense Christ paid the penalty for our sins. And so by paying that penalty he paid our debt and that’s why we don’t owe anything. But you can take the other side of this. Not only have I been justified in the sense of forgiven or that my debt’s been erased, but I have been justified in the sense that the righteousness of Christ has been given to me. I have become the righteousness of Christ. The breastplate of righteousness that I wear in the armor of God is that the righteousness of God has been given to me in Christ. It is a gift.

So one thing is taken away and another thing is given to me. So the debt is taken away and the righteousness is given as a gift. And we see this very clearly in Romans 3 where it says that there is a righteousness that you earn by obeying the law and there is a righteousness that is given as a gift. And that’s what we’re talking about in justification, it’s got both of these sides to it. It is the eraser of our debt which is a kind of forgiveness. The theological word is imputation, but it’s the giving to us of the righteousness of Christ.

[09:04] Stephanie: So then we’re going to dig a little bit deeper because righteousness can also be a churchy term unless you’re using it like a hippie, “righteous.”  So can you just give a little bit more clarification on what you mean by righteous?

[09:23] Marcus: In a court righteous means innocent, that I am not guilty. Relationally righteous means that I am in a right standing or right relationship, that our relationship is not broken, it is not off track. We are okay with each other. So righteousness actually carries this relational connotation with us. If I’m declared innocent in a courtroom then  we should be okay with each other now like, that’s been resolved, that’s done.

So what we had said before is that all of these PACT words are all pointing to one goal, and that goal is reconciliation. And so you think, what did Christ do for us in the Gospel? He reconciled us relationally with the Father. How did he affect reconciliation? Through the pardon, through adoption, through citizenship, and through giving us a new title. So all those things are how he affected reconciliation. In this case our justification is one of the things that God did for us so that we could be reconciled with Him.

[10:37] Stephanie: Beautiful. Thank you. All right, purification.

[10:41] Marcus: So purification… the book of Hebrews is the main book in the Bible that kind of camps out on this idea. Not only is our debt paid, but sin has been taken away. It’s like God says, I’m going to take away your sin. I’m going to give you righteousness and you are going to be purified. Because there’s a lot of us who feel dirty, we feel unworthy. We feel like the things that I have done have stained me for life. And the question is, can I ever be clean? Can I ever feel good about myself again? And the answer is yes. So purification is that God has this ability to remove from us.

And so this is where the idea of exchange life comes from. Some people call this the great exchange. I give God my sin and he gives me his righteousness, that’s a pretty good deal. And so that’s kind of the idea of purification. And as the east is far from the west so my sin is taken away from me and that key concept. Different books will emphasize different elements of this. So Romans really camps out on justification, Galatians camps out on justification. Hebrews, not so much, it’s more on purification and a little bit more into sanctification.

[12:05] Stephanie: Well, let’s go there then.

[12:07] Marcus: So sanctification is in the context of worship. So the background is a tabernacle or temple and the tabernacle or temple is sacred space. Now, this is a big conversation in itself, but sacred space is that there is heaven and there is earth and there are places that connect them. And so for something heavenly to be experienced by something on Earth that place on earth has to be sanctified. Something has to happen to that place to allow God’s perfect heavenly presence to be there. So before God and the Shekinah glory could inhabit the tabernacle they went through a whole purification process. Blood was sprinkled on it and oil and all these other things that went on. But primarily blood was sprinkled there.

And God said, okay it has now been sanctified, which means it’s been dedicated to me. It’s been made kind of heaven appropriate, if you will, so that he can now be there. And it’s after that when the cloud of glory fills the tabernacle. Exact same process happened when they built the temple and Solomon dedicated it. There was a cleansing and a purification that they did to sanctify the building so that the glory of God could be in there.

So the same thing happens to us as Christians because now we are his temple. And so there is this purification, but there’s this sanctification that takes place that says, I am now sacred, that I myself have no longer of this world. I am now of the heavenly world and now belong in that space. And because I’ve been sanctified in Christ I am now fit for the Holy Spirit to live in me. Now, this clearly has nothing to do with my behavior because God took care of that sin problem in a different way. This has to do with the fact that God has now dedicated me to Him. I belong to him.

And now that I am sacred, the Holy Spirit can live in me and I can be his temple. You can say the same thing about the church. The church is God’s temple. It’s been sanctified by what Jesus did on the cross. And now, because it is sacred space, I’m not talking about church buildings here, right? The people of God are fit to be inhabited by the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit could not dwell in an unsanctified space. But interestingly, he also is the active member of the Trinity in sanctifying us. We’re sanctified by the Spirit.

And with that comes this idea of holiness and that I’ve been made holy. And one of the ways I think of holiness is that holiness has to do with something that is not of this world. I remember R. C. Sproul said something once that I thought was really interesting. He said, “The counterfeit of holiness is horror.” And that just always stuck with me because he said the idea of something being holy is that it’s not of this world. Meaning it belongs to God, it belongs to God’s kingdom.

So Satan’s counterfeit of something that’s not of this world is like this horror monster that can’t be killed or whatever. It’s unearthly. But that’s a counterfeit of what we’re talking about here. God is saying, I have been sanctified and now the Holy Spirit lives in me. It’s another way of saying I am now a fit temple because of what Christ has done. That’s a long explanation.

[15:39] Stephanie: Really good. It made me think, oh, I could take that in so many different directions. Someday we need to do a series on holiness but for now, do you want to carry on to redemption?

[15:51] Marcus: Yeah. Redemption is the picture that comes from the slave market. And for someone to be redeemed it means they’ve been bought from slavery, and generally they’re bought from slavery and set free. That’s the idea. And so there’s this beautiful picture in the Gospel. What a wonderful thing it is for a slave to be redeemed and to have their freedom bought for them. But how much more amazing is it for that slave to be purchased and adopted. Paul says God’s grace is lavish. It’s amazing, it’s profound. Like it would have been gracious of God just to set us free like, okay go have a nice life, I’ve taken care of that for you. But he says, I’m not only setting you free from the slavery you were in, I am adopting you into my family. I’m going to make you an heir. I’m giving you authority to represent family business in the name of Jesus.

And Paul almost can’t contain himself and in Ephesians he bursts into this fourteen verse sentence. In Greek it’s one sentence, but it’s like this fourteen verse doxology because he’s so happy and excited about what God’s done for us in Christ. Who knew Greek was that fun. I’m telling you.

[17:15] Stephanie: I love it. And we’re going to talk about adoption next episode, so very good. So can you step back and tie this into the sacred romance and also remind people what that is?

[17:31] Marcus: Yeah. So we talk about a kingdom worldview and seeing the world through the filter of the kingdom of God. And that there are three core components to that. Sacred Romance is the idea that God created us for intimacy with Him and he wants us to be in relationship with Him. Two, is sovereign lordship. God is the king, the God who loves us is also the king and he is over everything. So everything is accountable to God. And sovereignty is primarily about accountability.

And that is that everybody has to answer to God. It also speaks to his right and his rule to make whatever decisions he sees fit. Then we get to the third one, which is spiritual warfare. Satan can’t change the fact that God loves us. He can’t change the fact that God’s sovereign. So he tries to sabotage that in every way he can.

And you think about the things that we tend to mistrust about God. We either don’t trust that he loves us, meaning I don’t trust he’s as good as the Bible says he is, or I don’t trust that he’s as in control as the Bible says that he is. I don’t trust that he’s going to be just to me. And so Satan tries to attack the character of God. So you need all three pillars otherwise you end up with that classic argument against the existence of God. Well, how can God be all good and God be sovereign?

The answer to that argument of how can God be good and be sovereign and permit evil is that spiritual warfare is real, and we live in a present evil age, and God is going to bring that to an end. And one of the things that he does is he sends his son Jesus to take care of the sin issue as a crucial step in this whole process, of defeating evil once and for all. So that we can be in that sacred romance and be in that intimate relationship that he’s always desired for us.

[19:36] Stephanie: Yay!

[19:37] Marcus: All of this connects to that, right? So in the same way again that a wedding connects the marriage, and the wedding is the celebration of the covenant beginning and the formation of this relationship. So the new covenant is defining the relationship and  it’s defining what it means about my walk with God. And so part of the definition there is the sin issue that separated me and God’s been taken care of. The Tetelestai, it’s done and it’s giving that level of definition to my relationship.

So part of that is saying, this is why it’s okay for you two. One of you a sinner, one of you the holy God of the universe, how can you guys be in relationship with each other? How can you be a father and child together? And the answer is because God dealt with that. He purified you, he pardoned you, he redeemed you, he took care and sanctified you. All of that has been taken care of.

[20:35] Stephanie: He got rid of the obstacle in the way.

[20:36] Marcus:  He got rid of the obstacle to the relationship. So that’s kind of how they’re connected.

[20:41] Stephanie: Huzzah! So could you give us sort of, and I know we’re going to start running out of time here, but what does this practically mean? This is a very large question, but what does this mean for my everyday life? Like, yay, theologically I understand I am pardoned and I can have a relationship with God, but how do I walk this out?

[21:08] Marcus: So I was thinking back to people I’ve met in my life who have had a core identity of being worthless, or being dirty, or being a disappointment or something. Their core identity is in this negative thing, and we all struggle with it at times. And I’ve had times in my life where I’ve struggled with, does God really like me that much? Is he really that delighted in me? Because I’m not all that delighted in myself. So if I’m not all that delighted in me how can he be?

And I think we all struggle with that at some level because we look at ourselves and we tend to see the gaps in what we could be and the way that we actually live. We can get fixated on those gaps or we can feel stained in a way. Sometimes it’s helpful just to have things in black and white that are concrete that says this is not just an emotion that you go through but this is objectively true about you. You are objectively forgiven and objectively the righteousness of God has been given to you. You can claim that and in a sense when you’re claiming it you’re not making it happen, you’re just affirming that this is actually true.

Part of the purpose of Biblical meditation is taking every thought captive and saying, you know what, no matter how much I’m tempted to focus on the gaps, I’m going to choose to focus on what the Bible says is true here, and fill my mind with those things.

[22:43] Stephanie: Good answer. So I’m going to pull a really quick note from one of our listeners. This one is short and sweet and brings a smile to my face. Lois says, “Y’all doing great. Praise God.”

[22:57] Marcus: Anytime you get a Y’all.

[22:59] Stephanie: It just makes me very happy. I just want to remind everyone, if you have a question for us or a testimony to share or even an icebreaker, please reach out. You’ll find a mailbox button in my Monday emails and there’s also a link in the Deeper Walk instagram profile that will get you to that mailbox.

[23:17] Marcus:  I just call it the behold button.

[23:20] Stephanie: You’re really fixated on beholding the button. Maybe I should go into a syntactical explanation for what behold actually is in the Hebrew and how maybe sometimes we’re misusing that word. Another day we’ll have a spin off series that’s like in the weeds.

[23:41] Marcus: On the trail and in the weeds.

[23:44] Stephanie: I also did want to just give another reminder about the school of ministry. So we talked about that more in the last episode but here’s your reminder. If you have been thinking about school of ministry the next cohort starts in January, so get your application in.

[24:02] Marcus: But the deadline is in December though?

[24:04] Stephanie: The deadline for signing up is in December, yeah. There’s also only like up to 20 spots available so you want to get those applications in sooner than later. All right, Father, any closing thoughts for pardon?

[24:18] Marcus: Well, this was a big one for me personally because we all do things sometimes and we’re like, why did I do that? I know not to do that. I’ve made a specific point to make a determination that I’m not going to mess up in that area again and then I mess up. And for years what would happen is, it would take me days sometimes until I felt like I could pray again or until I felt like I was okay enough to hang out with God again. And what this doctrine really is teaching us is you don’t have to wait. I can be in the middle of sinning and I’m actually better off going, wait a second, God I need you.

Come and be with me. Thank you that you still love me. I need your help now more than ever. And so what I was doing is I was waiting to rekindle my relationship with God until I felt better about myself. And all I was doing was putting a gap in my relationship with God that didn’t need to be there. So the sooner I can invite God into even my failures the better. And so this gives me a doctrinal foundation for why I can do that. And that was really the biggest change in my life that this information made.

[25:37] Stephanie: All right. We are in the new covenant portion of our identity series. Last episode, we talked about the “P” of PACT. This episode, we’re going to dig into the “A” of PACT. But first, do you want to just give us a brief reminder of what PACT is?

[25:52] Marcus: Yeah, PACT is a summary of the identity statements in the New Testament. Because there’s not a single passage on the new covenant that just lays the whole thing out, you kind of have to go searching for what does the new covenant give us? What are the legal terms if you will be in the new covenant? And going from the premise that if there is an “In Christ” statement in the New Testament, like in Christ you are in Christ, you are, then that constitutes a term of the new covenant. So I’ve organized those into four buckets, if you will.

The first ones are all the terms related to pardon. That would be like justification, redemption, sanctification, and purification. The A is adoption. C is citizenship, things that have changed there. And then the last one is we’ve given a new title, we’re saints. So all of these also are legal terms because the covenant is a legal document. So we’ve been emphasizing what our legal identity is in Christ.

[26:49] Stephanie: Huzzah! So to get us going into adoption I wanted to read a portion of scripture, and then we can dialogue with it from there. All right. So this is Romans 8:12-17. I’m going to read it in the ESV. “So then, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

[27:50] Marcus: All right, there’s just a little bit there.

[27:52] Stephanie: Just a little bit there. So I just wanted that to kind of set the tone, but I also thought you could give us some look into what adoption meant in that culture.

[28:07] Marcus: Before I dive into that let me just point out that there are two elements of our family that are connected here. One is adoption and the other is new birth. And you’ll notice that this is talking about the spirit of adoption and being born of the Spirit which brings us back to John 3. And so whenever we’re talking about “I am a child of God”, there is this legal part which is our adoption and there is this, what I call living part. Which is that we have been born again, we’ve been born of the Spirit.

And so this passage beautifully brings those two things together. And that is those who are born of the Spirit walk in the spirit. And in fact you can’t walk in the spirit if you haven’t been born in the Spirit, right? So you’re stuck walking according to the flesh. As we talk about adoption, then that kind of cements it.

And what covenants do is they define our identity. They define our relationships and so they define our identity in terms of our relationships. So marriage covenant defines my identity in terms of my relationship. Adoption does the same thing, it says legally I now belong to this family. In the Roman world, back to your question, right?  In the Roman world the most famous adoption that everybody would have known of then was Julius Caesar adopted Octavian. Octavian then became Caesar Augustus. When he was adopted there were several things that automatically came about. He had access to the family. Julius Caesar now had a relational connection they didn’t have before and it gave him access to Caesar in a way that he wouldn’t have had before. It gave him authority to operate in the name of the family.

It gave him this inheritance. He immediately became the richest person in the Roman Empire. It gave him all kinds of things which set the stage for him to become the successor of Caesar. So in the Roman world adoption was a very real tangible thing. It completely changed how things were done. And it was not uncommon in that culture for there to be multiple witnesses of an adoption. In fact, I heard from William Barkley in his commentary that there were always twelve witnesses.

I haven’t been able to corroborate that, he’s the only one I’ve heard say that but that there were twelve witnesses at an adoption ceremony. That way no one could ever say no, that never really happened. There were eyewitnesses or a lot of eyewitnesses because the impact was so significant, because you can now have control over family assets. You were now given money in a will, you were now given land. You were given an awful lot of power and influence through this adoption. So it is almost more significant if you will, in the Roman world that is informing this text than it is even in our world today, because it just was so expansive in the implications.

[31:07] Stephanie: Adopted children had certain things that even the natural born children didn’t have.

[31:15] Marcus: Again, according to William Barclay, I haven’t been able to corroborate this, but he says very clearly in one of his commentaries that a Roman father had what was called the Pater Potestas. So it’s the Latin meaning the power of the father. And that meant that he could literally have life and death control over his children until they got married or until they were out on their own at some level. As long as they were part of his household it meant that he could literally order them killed. And there were no repercussions. That was not murder. That was him executing justice in his family. He could not do that to an adopted child. He could also disinherit a natural born child. You could never disinherit an adopted child. So there are actually greater protections in Roman culture for adopted kids than there were for birth kids.

[32:09] Stephanie: That’s fascinating.  So adoption brings us into the family of God. Do you want to talk more about the practical realities of what that means for us?

[32:20] Marcus: So in our family you’ve got an aunt and an uncle, my brother and sister who were adopted and they went through an adoption process. We’ve got an interesting family history. My mom, your grandmother, was married and had two kids with a man named Elmer Neuenschwander. He was tragically killed by lightning on a golf course. Just suddenly died leaving a four year old little girl and a nine week old baby boy. About a year later my mom married Timothy Warner, who is my dad and your grandfather. And so my dad had to go to court and do a legal transaction in which he officially adopted my half brother and sister into the family and their names changed from Neuenschwander to Warner.

And he had to say, I will make them equally heirs of any fortune I may amass in my life. Now my dad did not amass a huge fortune, but he did pretty well and he passed on equally to everybody. It was actually written there. So it was a very concrete idea that there is this legal reality, this legal action that takes place called adoption that changes your identity in terms of your relationships. And now it is defined that their identity significantly changed. But even my identity as their brother, our relationship was now defined by law and with that came rights and responsibilities.

[33:53] Stephanie: I love my aunt and uncle, and my aunt who is also your sister. You have three siblings, they are fabulous. So let’s talk more about if you are in Christ and you are adopted into God’s family, what does that look like?

[34:14] Marcus:  The new covenant what it does is, and I kind of hinted at this in the story, but it does several things. In fact, I think I list four of them in the book A Deeper Walk, and one of them is that it gives us access. So I got to alliterate. We got access, we have authority, and we have what’s the other one, remind me?

[34:35] Stephanie: Acceptance.

[34:36] Marcus:  Acceptance. Thank you. I don’t know why I forget that one. Authority, acceptance, and access. All right, so now that I confused everybody we’re going to do this in reverse order. So we start with access. My favorite picture when I think about…..

[34:49] Stephanie:  Okay, wait, there are four. This is your “AI” identity because the fourth one is an I.

[34:57] Marcus: Yeah there are four.

[34:59] Stephanie: Access, acceptance, authority, and inheritance.

[35:04] Marcus:  Very good. So those are the four. So the first one was access. So when I think of access, the picture that always comes to my mind shows my age. When I was born John F. Kennedy was president and he was unique in that he was a young father in the White House. And so there are all these pictures of his kids playing in the Oval Office at his desk. And I always think of that when I think of access. They had access because they were his kids. I had a little bit of that. My dad was the president of a college and at age seven I could walk right into the office of the president of the university and nobody stopped me because I had access.

[35:50] Stephanie: I had some of that too when you were the senior pastor. And my school met for a time in the building of the church. I might have been a little entitled to just wander wherever I wanted in that building.

[36:01] Marcus:  So Hebrews puts this access into the words that we come boldly. We have confidence to come boldly before the throne of grace. And so that’s describing the kind of access that we have. And Jesus himself said, I’m not even saying I’ll ask my Father for you. You can go straight to my Father and ask Him for whatever you need and ask Him for whatever you want. So that’s the kind of access that we’re talking about. So that’s number one.

[36:31] Stephanie: Number two is acceptance.

[36:32] Marcus: All right, so acceptance. My dad used to walk people through a question that went something like this. Let’s take these words authority, accountability, affirmation, and acceptance. Most of us who are fear bonded to God, in fact, probably all of us who are fear bonded to God, start with the idea that God is the authority to whom I am accountable. And because I’m accountable to Him if I do well he’ll affirm me. If I don’t do well he won’t affirm me.

And if I am affirmed then I’ll be accepted. But if I’m not affirmed I won’t be accepted, I’ll be rejected. And so we live with this fear that we aren’t going to live up to the standard by which we will gain acceptance. We are stuck with what many people have called performance based acceptance. My dad said, “Well, what if that’s actually the opposite order?” And he would lay this out.

What if it starts with acceptance and that says, because you are my child I accept you. As my child I affirm you and I tell you I love you, and I tell you that you’re my delight.  Now, I’m asking you to be accountable to my authority. What if it goes in that order? I remember my dad showing this to missionaries and showing it to people in full time Christian ministry and just having their minds blown.

They realized, you know what? I have been approaching my Christianity upside down and backwards most of my life because I have not been starting from a place of acceptance with God. I’ve been trying to earn acceptance. And that usually happens because I feel like I’ve had to earn love from other people. I felt like I’ve had to earn whatever I get in life. And we have a hard time with unconditional love anywhere. But that’s really what we mean by acceptance. It’s the unconditional love of God. So that would be the second thing that comes with our adoption. Third is, remind me.

[38:26] Stephanie: Authority.

[38:27] Marcus: Thank you. Because I’m obviously brain dead today.

[38:34] Stephanie: We’re very tired.

[38:35] Marcus: Authority is the right to represent the family in business. So you go back to the Roman world and an adopted child could go and negotiate contracts on behalf of the family. They have the authority to do that. In our case we can do things in the name of Jesus. If I’m doing it in the name of the family or in the name of Jesus then there is something that is recognized as authentic in the court by this. Now demons know that we have this kind of authority.

So what I found in spiritual warfare is that a lot of times they’ll push back to see if we believe it. But as soon as they know that we know what kind of authority we have and that they can’t mess with that, then they back off. But they will push sometimes just to see, do you really understand who you are and what kind of authority that you have? Because I know it, but I don’t think you do. And so I’ve seen this multiple times through the years.

And every now and then you just remind them that I am a child of God. I am seated with Christ in the heavenly realms at the right hand of the Father, and you are not my equal. You are beneath me. And I am speaking to you as one with authority. It’s not that I’m more powerful than you, because authority is the right to represent power. In this case I have the right to represent the power of the kingdom of God. So I’m not saying I am stronger, wiser, smarter, or anything than any demonic power.

What I’m saying is that I have more authority because I can represent the authority of Christ and his kingdom against them, and that puts them at a level below me. And so it goes beyond that too. Because whatever we’re doing in the name of Jesus we’re doing basically in the name of the family, in the name of God’s heavenly family. So those are the first three, right?

[40:31] Stephanie: That’s awesome. As you were talking about it we are in this extended series on identity and we started with attachment based. And we’re in the beliefs based segment right now. And so you have the attachment, you have the relational connection, and now we’re working on the beliefs. Okay, do you believe what you said about the demons? They are like, yeah, we know that you’re related, we know your attachment, but do you believe your attachment? And it all works together.

[40:59] Marcus: It does. It all connects together. And even the covenant is about attachment. It’s about defining that attachment. And we see this still coming up. I’ve got access to God so I can come boldly into his presence and just tell Him I have a need. I don’t deserve to get this need met, but this is a throne of grace. So I’m coming here asking you as your child. We can represent the family and the family business using the name of Jesus. And we also have this acceptance that starts from a place of acceptance. It’s not something we’re trying to earn. That brings us to our fourth thing, right, so this is the I. As you like to say, we have AI. Artificial intelligence. Maybe artificial identity is not the case here..

[41:44] Stephanie: That only goes so far, doesn’t it?

[41:46] Marcus:  It does. So this is inheritance. And again, in the Roman world this was one of the main purposes of adoption. It was to determine who got the inheritance and where it was going. It was interesting for instance, we talked about Julius Caesar. He had a natural born son with Cleopatra named Caesarean. So there was this huge legal battle over who gets to represent the family. Who gets the authority, who gets the inheritance, and who gets all this? Octavian or Caesarean? Now Caesarean was a baby so it was his mother Cleopatra who was representing him.

[42:22] Stephanie: There’s all sorts of complications right there.

[42:24] Marcus:  There are all sorts of complications right there. And so it helped that Caesar never actually married Cleopatra. And so Caesarean didn’t have the same level of rights. The adoption of Octavian was to clarify that this is where I want it to go. And so we saw this among a lot of the Caesars who would actually adopt their heir and bypass their natural children to put their adopted son on the throne as the next emperor.

[42:52] Stephanie: And historically that tended to go better.

[42:56] Marcus: That tended to go better. They had what they called five competent emperors. Yeah,  I got that from somebody. Five competent emperors and those were the ones who were adopted. And then Marcus Aurelius, who’s considered this genius, decided to skip that and let his son come. And his son is Commodus. He has the word commode in his name and he flushed the Roman Empire down the commode.

[43:31] Stephanie: All right, this is into the weeds with the Warners.

[43:33] Marcus: Welcome to conversations around our dinner table.

[43:40] Stephanie: I love it.

[43:45] Stephanie:  As we said, we are tired today guys. You were talking about inheritance and then also wrapping up and  maybe bringing all of the four together.

[43:55] Marcus: So that’s inheritance in the Roman world. As Christians when we’re talking about inheritance Peter reminds us that we have an incorruptible inheritance that cannot spoil or fade. Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, don’t store up for yourselves treasures here on Earth, store up treasures in heaven because it can’t be taken away from you. This idea also is embodied in the New Testament idea of hope. And the idea of hope is directly connected to our inheritance. Now that your hope is in place and your hope is that you’re taken care of, in a sense, God’s like, go love other people. Trust what I’ve given you, that’s faith, and now go love other people knowing that you’re okay.

And that makes a huge difference because so often we’re like, well, if I love people well enough then God will give me an inheritance. If I have enough faith then God will give me an inheritance. But it’s kind of flipped. It’s like hope is the anchor. It’s the foundation of this. And because we’ve been given this hope now God’s saying, trust it, live in faith, and let that faith produce love as you love other people. There is a direct connection between this idea that I am taken care of and that I’m now free to love other people. And that’s what brings faith, hope, and love together. And as God says, the greatest of these is love. But I think the spring or the origin of those things is actually our hope.

[45:22] Stephanie:  I love it. So could you maybe tie adoption and pardon together at all?

[45:33] Marcus: Adoption and pardon are doing very different things. Pardon is taking care of the obstacles that keep us from a relationship. It’s like, okay, there are some problems here that have to be resolved before I can adopt you and we have to take care of the sin problem. We got to take care of the sanctification problem. Pardon is kind of clearing the way for the relationship of reconciliation. Now we are affirming that reconciliation and we are codifying the reconciliation if you will. Not only are you reconciled but I’m going to adopt you. Going back to the Roman Empire on this one, one of the pictures that I love is that the slaves, when they were freed, often went through a process.

They were not only set free, they were given a plaque or a certificate or something that they could show people showing that I am a freedman, I am not a slave. And in the Roman Empire, slaves had nothing to do with race. This was just prisoners of war basically.  They would be set free but it was almost unheard of for somebody to only be given their freedom.

They were also given something that was often called grace. And the grace that they were given was the money for a new start, perhaps land, or perhaps the ownership of a business. They were given something that they needed to go start a new life. Now in response to the grace that they were given and their freedom, that would be like pardon. And then they were given their grace which is an opportunity for a new start. It was understood and expected that you would show loyalty in return.

Well, the Greek word for that loyalty is the same word we use for faith, you’ll be faithful to me because of the grace that I’ve shown you. And so you have this interesting interplay between grace and faith and the Roman culture that I think is informing part of what Paul’s talking about. God gives us grace and in return he asks for faith. And not just an intellectual belief, but a loyalty that comes out of that. You’ll be faithful to doing things his way.

And that’s why Paul says, even to the point of suffering, even to the point that now I’m not going to walk in the flesh anymore, I’m now going to walk in the spirit. That’s all part of faith, that’s living by faith. What I find interesting is that the apostle Paul in Ephesians talks about the lavish grace of God. And it’s like he says, God takes this whole process a step further. He says we were slaves of sin. In fact, I think the gospel is best explained not in terms of we were sinners separated from God, that’s fine, but I think it’s even better explained as we were slaves in a prison with an evil master.

In other words, our situation was like the Israelites under Pharaoh. We were being abused, we were being kept in abject slavery, and God showed up and did this miraculous thing. He brought us to freedom. So our freedom is an amazing thing and it’s completely undeserved. We didn’t do anything. He didn’t lead the Israelites in an uprising. He just saved them so it’s the same thing. God just sent his son and he saved us.

And he brought us freedom. Then in a sense, he adopted them. And in a sense he married them. So he entered into a covenant relationship with them. And so we could look at it this way, God not only set us free under the new covenant, but it says he has given us everything that we need for life through his great and precious promises, and then he adopts us. So it’d be like in the Roman world.

If I set you free and I gave you all of this, everything that you needed for life and then I adopted you and made you my heir. I gave you authority and gave you access. That would completely change your life. And this is the lavish grace of God that he has done for us. He has set us free, he’s given us everything we need for life, and he has adopted us so that we have our future set. Our access and all the great things that come with adoption.

[49:59] Stephanie: Hallelujah!

[50:00] Marcus: Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

[50:01] Stephanie: Understatement!

[50:04] Marcus:  It’s lavish, to use Paul’s words. I think this is why Paul blurts out this fourteen verse sentence in Greek, the 14 verses of Ephesians one. Well, eleven verses from Ephesians 1:3-14, I think it’s all one verse sentence in Greek. And it’s all a doxology of praise where Paul just sort of blurts out, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who blessed us in the heavenly realms with every blessing that there is to be given.” And he’s just exploding with joy. He talks about what God has given to us in Christ and it’s all about, in Christ this is true, and in Christ this is true. And adoption is right at the heart of that whole thing that he’s excited about.

[50:50] Stephanie: Huzzah!. And we’re going to keep talking about it next week. We’re covering a lot coming to the end of the episode. I want to give a quick shout out to the October, 35th Anniversary conference where Dad is going to be talking about Breakthrough. Judy Dunagan is going to be there, Dan Rumberger is going to be there, Juni Felix is going to be there, Chris Coursey is going to be there, and a whole bunch of the Deeper Walk staff. It is going to be fabulous. And you can come online if you’re thinking last minute, hey, I can’t travel that far. Or hey, the tickets got sold out or something.

[51:25] Marcus: We’re just about sold out.

[51:27] Stephanie: Yeah, but you can attend online and we would love to see you.

[51:31] Marcus: Yeah.

[51:32] Stephanie: So, yeah, quick shout out to that. Find more information out at Deeper Walks website. Father, any closing thoughts?

[51:41] Marcus: It’s really good to review this honestly. It’s like I said, I teach about adoption and identity all the time and then once I started teaching about it, I remembered how exciting this is. I was like, oh, this is such a good reminder. This is such an important thing because it’s so easy to slip back into this performance mindset and maybe I’m not worth that much after all, or maybe I’m a disappointment after all. And you’re looking at things and realize, okay, now this is good. It’s good to remind ourselves of what God has done for us.

And the word grace itself comes from the motivation, from what motivated God to do all of this for us. It was the graciousness of his heart that said, you know what? I’m going to set them free. You know what? I’m going to give them everything they need for life. And you know what? I’m going to adopt them into the family. I’m going to give them an inheritance. I’m going to give them access. I’m going to give them authority. It’s the lavish grace of God and it’s good to reflect and meditate on that.

[52:50] Stephanie: So let’s talk more about citizenship.

[52:52] Marcus: All right, citizenship. So the Greek word for citizen is Oikonomia, from which we get the English word economy. At the anchor of it is Oikos, which is the idea of house, but it goes beyond house to the idea of a family system. So a whole family system was the Oikos. So it’s like the house of Gucci, the house of, I don’t know, the house of Warner, cause we’re kind of similar like that. An economy had to do with a system and it was usually a family system. It could extend to a tribal system. So this idea of citizenship when it comes to our Christian life basically comes down to one core idea, we are not of this world any longer. We are now in the kingdom of God. So our citizenship has changed from being citizens of the world to being citizens of the kingdom. So that’s the core of what we’re talking about.

[53:53] Stephanie: And before we get into the spiritual stuff, I want to make sure we have a good, concrete idea for what it looks like normally. What citizenship means normally. Because I think it also helps inform how we’re wrapping our brains around things. So do you want to maybe talk in the present and then we can move to some more Roman history?

[54:13] Marcus: But I love Roman History.

[54:15] Stephanie: Oh, we all love Roman history.

[54:16] Marcus: All right. Most of us I’m guessing know people who have had to go to court and go through a process to become a U.S. citizen. We’ve worked with refugees who became immigrants who went through the whole process of becoming citizens. And when that happens there are legal changes to your identity that take place because of that. My wife, your mother, I tell her I married a Brazilian beauty. She’s not technically Brazilian, but she has Brazilian citizenship. Her heritage is more German, but she was born in Brazil so she has dual citizenship. So that’s a legal thing. What it does is it affects your rights. What are your rights and your privileges and also your responsibilities? So if you become a citizen of a different entity than you were a citizen of before, it comes with both rights and responsibilities. It’s the same with our citizenship in heaven.

[55:23] Stephanie: All right, now I will unleash you into Rome.

[55:25] Marcus: Into Rome.

[55:27] Stephanie: That could be scary.

[55:29] Marcus: So Paul says in Philippians 3:20, your citizenship is in heaven.  One of the reasons that’s significant is the city of Philippi to whom he’s writing, was a Roman colony that was originally colonized and given to Roman veterans. So if you were a veteran of the Roman legions, part of your pay as a Roman legionnaire was that when you retired you were given land ,and you were basically taken care of for the rest of your life. So it was like a pension. Well, Philippi was one of those places where it was populated with Roman soldiers who were veterans of the Roman army.

And so the idea of citizenship was really keen there. So everybody who was born in Philippi even though it was north of Greece in Macedon, everybody there was born a Roman citizen. And that meant they had special rights that came with being citizens. So in general, this idea of citizenship was used by the Roman Empire to threaten, like, do you really want to stand up to us because we can beat you up. They had a lot of threats. They were the most dominant military the world had seen up to that point.

[56:47] Stephanie: It was a carrot and stick.

[56:49] Marcus: It was a carrot and a stick. So they had the threat and they had the promise of something good. Well, the good thing that they routinely promised was citizenship as well as trade. But citizenship was the main one. And so there were people everywhere who wanted to become Roman citizens because of some of the rights that came with that. One, there were people you could marry as a Roman citizen that you couldn’t marry if you weren’t. It also affected your taxation. Roman citizens by and large, didn’t pay taxes. Everybody else paid the taxes to support them. Once that became impossible, there was still a different tax rate for citizens and non-citizens. It was an empire.

So most of that revenue was coming from people who’d been conquered. They were there to support the Roman citizens and their way of thinking. And then there was also perhaps most importantly this aspect of trial, and what happened with the legal system. You had more rights before the legal system as a Roman citizen. So we’re probably the most familiar with that because of the Apostle Paul who often invoked his citizenship.

It was interesting as he was in Philippi, which we’ve already mentioned. He was arrested and beaten, and then they found out he was a Roman citizen, and they were like, oh. They were very scared because Paul as a Roman citizen had the right to appeal to a higher court and they would have been the ones in trouble. They could have easily lost their positions. They could have been sent to prison themselves. They could have literally lost everything, it was a serious offense.

And so when they said, please just get out of town, Paul’s like, are you kidding me? You did all this to me and I’m a Roman citizen. You escort me out of town. And they did it because they knew he had every right to get them in a heap of trouble. So there are legal rights that come with citizenship that would have been really important back in those days. So when Paul’s talking about citizenship, he lived during the Roman Empire and this would have been the background. This is what would have come to everybody’s mind is the rights related to taxation, related to trials, and also just the relational rights. Who you would associate with and even to the point of who you could marry.

[59:16] Stephanie: Yeah. All right, now I’ll unleash you into the spiritual realities. So what are the practical but spiritual realities of being a citizen of heaven?

[59:25] Marcus: I often think of Jesus standing before Pilate. He’s on trial and Pilate says, So are you a king? And he gives a real simple answer, hey, yeah, but my kingdom is not of this world. If it was, my followers would rise up and fight for me. But now my kingdom is from another place. And Jesus frequently said, I’m from above. Especially the Gospel of John, it really hammers home on this that Jesus is portrayed as the one who is from above. From a different place, from a different world, who has come into this world and he has come to bring it light, and he’s come to bring it life. And he’s now brought in his first disciples and he has given them the same citizenship.

And so in his high priestly prayer, John 17, he prays and he says of his followers, they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. And so that is a citizenship statement. He said, I am not of the world, and you are not of the world. Which means if I’m not, then my identity has changed. When it comes to this world I am a stranger, I’m an alien, and I’m an outsider. And that’s the perspective like the Apostle Peter really brings home in his epistles.

And then on the positive side, I am a citizen, which means I have rights and I have responsibilities. Now, some of those rights bleed over into the adoption thing we just talked about where I have rights to inheritance. But Jesus even said to his disciples one time, who pays taxes? Is it the sons or is it the other people? Well, sons don’t pay taxes. Same thing, that kind of overlaps with the citizenship that God is not expecting us to pay our own way for this. He’s taking care of all of these things. So when we talk about citizenship it comes down to this fundamental identity of, am I of the world or am I not of the world? Am I of the kingdom? So part of this really starts with again, the Apostle John in 1 John 2:15, “Do not love the world nor anything of the world”.

This is getting at the same idea that as a citizen I want to make sure that I keep my first love Christ and his kingdom. When I think of that, “do not love the world”, I think of the world as the devil’s mistress. And she’s sexy and flirty, and hey, spend time with me, and I’ve got the good thing. And John is saying, don’t fall for that. Don’t fall for that nonsense of living for the pleasures of now, of living for what you can get now. Jesus says the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, let’s have that eternal perspective. And so living as a kingdom citizen will immediately mean living with an eternal perspective on life.

[01:02:34] Stephanie: Well, you can build more off of that. I want to bring up just two concrete things that are responsibilities that we have as citizens and facets of our identity, which are the ambassador and the steward. And you’re kind of on a steward train right there, so you can keep chugging along.

[01:02:54] Marcus: Yeah. So the idea of stewardship is that you were given a trust, you were given assets and you have been entrusted with those assets. And  we should be using the assets that we’ve been given for the sake of the kingdom. Now, we do this for two reasons. One, because that’s where our loyalty lies. But two, it’s also because that’s where our treasure lies. Like the Roman soldier who’s going to retire someday and that’s going to be my future. Jesus is saying the same thing. He’s like, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. So that’s what stewardship is all about. Stewardship is: I’m giving you these assets now, invest them for the kingdom, and use them for the benefit of the kingdom. Don’t just use them for the world and for your own selfish good.

And so the more that we do that it says not only are you helping the kingdom, but the king is saying, I’m going to remember what you’ve done. It will go into the treasure that you’re storing up for yourself. One of my favorite stories explaining this is Randy Alcorn who runs a ministry called Eternal Perspective Ministries, which makes sense because if you’re a kingdom citizen you’re living with an eternal perspective.

He talks about living overseas and some of his friends were also living overseas at the time and working there, they were just living lavishly, enjoying all the things that living overseas had to offer. Meanwhile, he had some nice things, he wasn’t living like a pauper, but he was sending the majority of it ahead to the U.S., to where he knew he was going to spend most of his life. He knew he was only there for a couple of years so he was always remembering, this is not my home. That’s the main thing, this is not my home.

I’ve got to remember where my home is and make sure that my priorities stay accordingly. So that’s the idea of a steward. A steward is making sure that their priorities are kingdom first. And this is embodied in that statement from the Sermon on the Mount. Seek first God’s kingdom, his righteousness, everything else will be taken care of. That’s the ultimate stewardship statement in the Bible.

[01:05:05] Stephanie: I want to get to ambassadorship, but maybe linger more on, what is the kingdom? Is the kingdom physically somewhere else? Like, what does it mean? What is the kingdom in terms of where you’re storing that treasure or with the perspective you’re thinking through?

[01:05:22] Marcus: ink it’s on Venus. It sometimes helps me to think of the kingdom of God as almost like being on another planet. But I use that just to make it a little more concrete for myself, not that I think it is. The idea here though, is that someday the kingdom of God is going to come to Earth.

[01:05:47] Stephanie: Because there’s a lot of “already”, not yet stuff with the kingdom.

[01:05:49] Marcus: There’s a lot of “already”, not yet stuff. And so there’s this unseen realm that we only get glimpses into in the Bible. But the promise is that in the same way that Jesus left, he’s coming back. And when he comes back he’s going to sit on David’s throne. He’s going to reign over the nations with a rod of iron. There’s going to be a literal kingdom here on Earth and we will reign with Him, it says. Well, technically, it’s those who are martyred for Christ in the Tribulation which gets us into a whole other set of weeds. It’s still this idea that the kingdom is a tangible future thing as well as a tangible present reality. It’s just that we don’t have as much access to the present reality because it’s spiritual. And there’s real spiritual power. There’s a real spiritual stuff going on, but we access it differently and we experience it differently.

[01:06:51] Stephanie: Thank you. That’s what I was going for. So, ambassadors, how are we ambassadors as citizens?

[01:06:59] Marcus: Well, if this world is not my home, then my home is heaven. That means that I am a heavenly person walking around in this world. Which means whether I want to be or not my very identity is ambassador. Because if that’s who I am, a citizen of the kingdom walking around wherever I go, then I represent heaven everywhere I go. I represent the kingdom of God everywhere I go, not just Sunday mornings. It’s like my ambassadorship is not just, oh, I should witness to this person, I should share the gospel with this person. I should do some kind of ministry. My identity is a kingdom person. Just like if I’m an American overseas somewhere, I don’t turn that on and off. The very fact that I am in America means I am a representative.

So Paul talks about this in 2nd Corinthians. He says, we’re all ambassadors of the kingdom of God and as ambassadors our mission is reconciliation. Which takes us right back to the reason for the covenant, the reason for identity and everything else. He said he’s given us a ministry of reconciliation. And as ambassadors of the kingdom we are crying out, “Please be reconciled to God.” So this is kind of what’s going on here. Paul was very acutely aware that there’s this official element to our identity that leads directly into mission. And so I don’t choose to go into mission, I am on mission, because that’s simply a part of who I am as a citizen of the kingdom in a foreign place. So all that ties together. Citizenship reminds us of stewardship. It also reminds us that I am an ambassador in everything that I do.

[01:08:46] Stephanie: Anything more about citizenship you want to cover specifically?

[01:08:51] Marcus: Well, those are the main things, to not love the world. To me that’s one of the more helpful identity things. I think it was C. S. Lewis who said, “Everybody you meet is either becoming a creature so despicable you’d recoil in horror, or something so glorious you’d be tempted to worship.” And was it Jim Elliott who said, “Whatever is not eternally useful is eternally useless?” And I think Lewis had another quote about eternity like that, but it’s the same idea. I think it’s helpful for us periodically just to step back and think about the eternal perspective that comes from being a citizen of the kingdom.

And to me that’s really the key thing here that I need to be looking at this world not just in terms of how am I going to survive this place? How am I going to thrive in this place? But how do I look at everything that I’m going through from the perspective of through the eyes of eternity, what’s really important here? And that’s a helpful way to kind of cut through some of the clutter in life.

[01:09:58] Stephanie:  That’s a good anchor. So you’ve already kind of been doing this naturally, but can you tie citizenship with pardon and adoption now, and how those work together with our identity?

[01:10:10] Marcus:  Yeah. So if you go back to the Roman system where most of them were slaves, if the anchor thing  is I’m in slavery like the Israelites under Pharaoh. Or I am a slave who’s been conquered by the Roman machine and now I’m working for this aristocratic Italian. It’s like, here I am. I’ve got this dual identity already. So I’m set free and that’s what the pardon is all about, is being set free. And then I’m given everything that I need for life and then I am adopted into the family. But with the adoption would also come citizenship. As a prisoner of war who’s become a slave I’m probably not a Roman. Roman citizens didn’t become slaves, it was prisoners of war who became slaves. It was people who went into significant debt who became slaves.

So I would lose the rights of citizenship as a slave. Being set free and being adopted by a family that is a Roman citizen then I also become a Roman citizen. Along with all of the rights and responsibilities that brings. And so all of these things do tie together. The pardon, the adoption, the citizenship. They’re all connected as the foundations of who we are and what this new identity is that God has so graciously given us.

[01:11:42] Stephanie:  Maybe it’s because you teach such a legal approach to spiritual warfare, but I just keep thinking about spiritual warfare principles. We’re talking about our rights and we’re talking about our authority. And those are very spiritual warfare things. So how does citizenship identity tie into spiritual warfare?

[01:12:02] Marcus: First of all, it determines which side of the war I’m on which is fundamental. I am not on your side, I am on Jesus’s side. That’s an important thing to get clear. In terms of the authority that I have as a child of God as somebody adopted is far greater than the authority I have as a citizen, but they are connected. And so I do think legally about this very much. And it helps me to understand that first of all, demons have rights and that I have rights. And so because demons have rights, it’s like if someone has given them permission to be someplace then legally they have a right to be there.

And that’s why I take this approach that says we got to get rid of those legal permissions and then we use our authority to evict and to command them to leave. And that’s why permission and authority go together so well in spiritual warfare. And since all of this is legal, the covenant is legal. If you stop and think about it, most of the words about salvation of the Bible have a legal overtone to them. From reconciliation to redemption to forgiveness to justification to adoption, and citizenship. A lot of legal stuff going on here.

[01:13:22] Stephanie: l right. All very important, thank you. And next week we are going to continue wrapping up PACT. We’re going to be talking about our title, which is Saint. I’m very excited about that. And before you give closing thoughts, do you want to give a pitch for why people should stop procrastinating and join the conference this week?

[01:13:43] Marcus:  I think that anytime you can be a part of something. I know it’s a lot to just sit at your desk and watch something, so I don’t actually expect people to do that, but it’s nice to have it on in the background. It’s nice to be able to focus on the stuff that you want and to feel like you’re a part of it. You have a connection to what’s going on and it also gives you just access to all of the teachings. So everybody who signs up to come in person automatically gets recordings of everything that goes on. By signing up you get access to all the recordings of everything that we do at the conference as well.

[01:14:16] Stephanie: And to clarify, I think you said it in person, but if you’re coming online you are also going to get those recordings.

[01:14:22] Marcus: What I meant is people coming in person are going to get all the recordings. But by signing up to attend online, you also not only get to watch it online, you get the recordings to watch whenever you want from that point on.

[01:14:35] Stephanie: So give us a peek. What are you most excited to be talking about?

[01:14:38] Marcus: So I have a book coming out March 5 called Breakthrough: Five Essential Strategies for Freedom Healing and Wholeness, which I’m going to be talking about. Three levels of breakthrough and five strategies or five engines that have to be addressed to experience those breakthroughs. So, quick peek. The three levels of breakthrough. And I’m sure we’ll do a podcast on this at some point, but three levels of breakthrough have to do with relief for pain, repair for damage, and then rebuilding our maturity.

So some people are just looking for pain relief. Some people know they have damage that needs repaired. A lot of us don’t think about our maturity that needs to be rebuilt. So the first one has to do with symptoms. I want to feel better. Second one has to do with roots, what are the root issues that need to be resolved. And then the third one has to do with habits that need to be developed. So the opening session is going to be taking a dive into those three things. And then throughout, I’m going to be looking at the five engines and the strategies that grow out of them of how we experience greater breakthroughs in our lives.

[01:15:46] Stephanie:  Huzzah!. And then there will be other lovely people who are going to be speaking too and it’s going to be an edifying party.

[01:15:54] Marcus: An edifying party, I like that. It should have been our tagline in the marketing. Here we go.

[01:15:58] Stephanie: 35 years of breakthrough because it’s our anniversary conference. Any closing thoughts?

[01:16:07] Marcus: Yeah. Once again, we’re talking about foundational stuff. If you go back to the foundations course that we offer at Deeper Walk and use the story of the well. It’s also in the book A Deeper Walk. And the idea of the well, just to remind people if it’s been a while since they’ve heard it. Is this picture of missionaries reclaiming a well that had become the town dump in a village in India. And as they cleaned it out they had to get rid of cobras, they had to get rid of a toilet, they had to get everything out. What they found that was the root cause of the whole thing was that the foundation stones had collapsed and it was keeping this fresh water from filling the well. So once they cleaned it, which is related to freedom, the next thing they had to do was reset that foundation.

And that foundation is like our identity in Christ. So when we come back to these identity teachings what we’re doing is revisiting the foundations of the faith, the foundation on which we’re building our lives. That’s why it’s so good to come back to this on a regular basis. And then what that does between the freedom and the identity it allows for the spirit to fill. He’s like the water that fills up the well and gives life and it bubbles up. And so the spirit is the source of all the life that we live as Christians and we do this in community. The well now becomes the centerpiece around which the community gathers and people are connecting. It took a community to get the well ready and it also then allows the community to benefit. And so the whole FISH model is kind of laid out with that illustration. So that’s my closing thought. It’s one of the reasons why we often come back to these foundational things related to identity again and again.

[01:17:58] Stephanie: I’m thinking in terms, like, we’ve been in the belief based identity part of our identity series. So title really does, at least to me, focuses a lot on what we believe about ourselves too. There’s a lot of debate and we’re going to get into it. So in Christ, are we sinners or are we saints? Actually, before I give that to you now, I’m going to give it to you from the past and read an excerpt from one of your books.

So this is an excerpt from A Deeper Walk. You say, “As Christians, we are given the title saint. The word saint is easily misunderstood because we often have associated it with people who are particularly godly or virtuous. It has become common to say, I’m no saint, but no Christian can honestly say this. We are all saints. Paul did not address a single letter to these sinners in the church of such and such city. It wasn’t that the Christians there were all virtuous. But being a saint is not something earned. It is an identity that serves as a foundation for virtue.” All right, Father, are we sinners or saints?

[01:19:10] Marcus: There you go. Well, I think I just said it.

[01:19:12] Stephanie: Yeah.

[01:19:13] Marcus: So there are three main views on this. There are Christians who are like, we are just sinners saved by grace. And that’s partly true, but it’s more accurate to say we were sinners and we have been saved by grace, and it’s changed our identity. I have yet to find a passage in one of Paul’s letters or anywhere in the New Testament after the cross, where anyone who is a follower of God is called a sinner. That title is not used, “you are a sinner.” So the closest we have to it is the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is talking, and this is pre-cross though. He says, “If you who are evil know how to do good things for your children, give them good gifts, how much more, your Father, who is in heaven?”

So what we have is this idea that there is something about me that is flawed. And what being given the title saint does, is it doesn’t take away all of my flaws and means that I no longer have any propensity for sin. So what we’re not saying is that my old sin nature has been dissolved and eliminated, and I no longer have any impulses towards sin. This is a title. So the idea of a title is saying that now saint is your core identity. Now, that takes us into a pretty big rabbit’s hole here, right?

What does it actually mean to be a saint? It’s directly related to all the words for holy. So in Greek, that’s the Hagios word. So maybe people have heard of the Hagios Sophia, which is Saint Sophia in Istanbul. Or Latin is probably more familiar to us. It’s Sanctus and all things related to Sacra. And we hear the very word sacred in this. That’s the latin word for holy. And just like Hagios is a Greek word for holy, the Hebrew word for those who want to know is Kadosh. Kadosh is the Hebrew word for holy. But what does it mean to be holy? And that’s what we’ll have to dive into.

So back to the sinner, saint thing. I am no longer a sinner, that is no longer my title as a Christian. I was a sinner. That’s why Paul can say in 1st Corinthians 6, and that is what some of you were. He gives this long list of sins that people have engaged in in the past. And what he doesn’t say is, and that’s what you still are, this is who you are. He says, and that is what some of you were, but you have been washed, you have been sanctified, and you have been justified. In other words, this has changed. And what has changed is that I’ve been given a new title, I’m a saint.

In fact, I heard Alistair Begg not too long ago say, “That we’re very quick to talk about what God has done in us in our conversion experience, but we sometimes miss that the core of what’s going on at conversion, is what God has done for us.” And I really like that distinction between us and for us, because some of us have these dramatic testimonies like, oh, I was selling drugs and then one day God zapped me. And all of a sudden I realized I needed to change.

And there’s others of us who grew up going to church our whole lives and have never really been bad or rebellious. And we’re like, well, you know, what’s going on? Well, the answer is, God did the same thing for each of us, even though the way it worked out in us may have looked differently. And so when we’re talking about being a saint that’s one of the things that God has done for us. He has given us the right to say, you are holy. And what that means is that I belong to God. And so it’s actually an attachment statement. It’s an identity statement that says, I belong to God, I am his. Because I belong to God, because that’s my identity, that is now the foundation for the way I want to live my life. I want to live as someone who belongs to God, not as somebody who belongs to the world. So it’s kind of similar to that citizenship thing in that sense.

[01:23:18] Stephanie: Especially in the ancient world, the idea of holiness, that wasn’t just a unique Christian idea. Holiness is reflecting the character. Belonging and reflecting the character of another, or of a deity.

[01:23:36] Marcus: That’s worth getting Into a little bit because a lot of people don’t realize that the word holy is used in other religions. It’s not an exclusively Christian term. And in those religions it doesn’t mean moral. Let’s say you’re talking to a Greek pagan who worships Athena. They would talk about something being holy. Well, what that means is that it belongs to Athena and thus it is connected to the realm of the divine, the realm of the unseen. So when something is sacred, there was actually a little bit of fear about treading into a sacred place because it belonged to the god.

And if you tread into that place and you do something that displeases the god, they just might curse you or something. And so everybody in the ancient world understood this idea of holiness and that there are some things that are not of this world strictly. And when you creep into those areas and touch those areas, you are opening yourself up to interaction with that realm. So in the same way the Old Testament and Biblical view of holiness has some of that to it. I heard R.C. Sproul, a good reformed theologian, said, “That the counterfeit to holiness in our culture is horror,” which I thought was really interesting.

He said, like, in horror movies, you encounter something that’s not of this world, something that won’t die. It’s like it keeps coming back and you can’t quite kill it. And so in a similar way, the counterfeit of that, is the idea that when something is holy it is connected to another realm. It is connected to that unseen realm, it’s connected to the eternal realm. And so when we enter into that realm things do get dangerous. I’m now playing with something that is more powerful than me, something that is greater than me, something that is more awesome than me.

And in the sense of our God, someone who is so pure and so majestic that he’s called a consuming fire. And so now God is saying, I am inviting you into my holiness and you will be holy because I am holy, you belong to me. You are connected to all of these things that are true about me in this unseen realm. Now live like it. So that’s the whole idea. It’s the foundation. This is who you are, I’m giving this to you. This is the new foundation, now live like it. Well, part of living like that is you need to walk in the spirit, not the flesh now, because that’s what holy people do. Holy people are connected to the spirit realm, so they walk in the spirit and not in the flesh.

[01:26:17] Stephanie: Which again, goes back to both the concepts of adoption and citizenship of who you are, act like it. This is who you are, believe it.

[01:26:30] Marcus:  Exactly. In some ways, all of these are just different metaphors for describing the same reality. Whether it’s adoption, citizenship, or whether it’s the new title of saint, they’re all describing the same transaction that has happened. I have been taken out of the kingdom of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s own son. Therefore I have moved from the realm of the lost to the realm of the found. I’ve gone from those who are distant to those who are near. Everything has changed.

And what I come near to is something that is eternal, it’s sacred, it’s holy, it’s of another realm. It’s pure, it’s majestic. And I now share in that because I belong to it and that changes everything. And I belong to it as a child who’s been adopted. I belong to it as a citizen who has changed kingdoms. I belong to it as a saint who is no longer defined by my sin, but is now defined by what God through Christ has done for me.

[01:27:29] Stephanie: Yes. On that note, let’s go back. You were starting to talk about the three basic views for understanding sinner versus saint. And do you want to unpack your understanding of those views?

[01:27:41] Marcus:  Yeah, sure. So it’s like I’m either I am a sinner and nothing has changed his view, number one. And I just think that’s not biblical. You can’t defend that. Number two…. I’m sorry, people will try. Here’s the challenge on this. Let me just give a little love here.

[01:28:04] Stephanie: I was going to say, imagine somebody who believes this is listening.

[01:28:07] Marcus: Yes. So here we go. When I wake up in the morning I am very much aware that if I live today in the flesh, I will sin. I don’t wake up in the morning thinking I am sinless. I don’t wake up in the morning saying, I am impervious to sin, I cannot be tempted to sin. That’s not what it means to be a saint. But I wake up in the morning and I have to remind myself that I am a saint, not a sinner. Let’s live like a saint today. I also have to walk in the spirit and not in the flesh, because either one of those will undermine my ability. So the title saint doesn’t take away my capacity to sin. So somebody said, well, you still have the capacity to sin, aren’t you a sinner? And my point here is we’re talking titles.

When you stand before God in the throne room of heaven he’s not saying, next sinner, next sinner. He’s saying, bring in the saint, bring in my son, bring in my daughter, bring in the next citizen. There are titles that are true about us in the kingdom and there are titles that are not used about us in the kingdom. And he is not going to say, bring in the next sinner when it’s our turn to stand before God because that transaction has already taken place.

[01:29:25] Stephanie: As you said before, Paul would have been fully in his rights to address letters to sinners if that was a title. Because usually his letters were like, oh, the church has received a letter from Paul, oh, no.

[01:29:39] Marcus: Hey, you saints, why aren’t you living like saints? So then the second one is that we are both sinners and saints kind of equally. It’s correct to call us sinners or saints. What they’re trying to do with this duality is acknowledge the fact that I still have a propensity to sin. I still have a fleshly nature that is drawn to and attracted to what is sinful, what is of this world, and not what is holy.

And so because of that they’re saying,  it’s appropriate to call that your sinful self or that you’re a sinner. Again, I’m not denying that we have a flesh that’s drawn towards and attracted to sin. What I am saying is that is the title that the New Testament uses of us.

[01:30:23] Stephanie: So we can be lowercase sinners, but we are uppercase saints.

[01:30:27] Marcus: Yeah, there’s another way to put it. Lowercase sinners, uppercase saints. And then the last one is that we should not be calling ourselves sinners, we should be calling ourselves saints. Now, one of the problems that some people have with this position is they think that it’s psychobabble. Like, oh, you’re just trying to talk yourself into positive reinforcement, into being good. And I will say they’re partly right. So part of this is that I am reminding myself who I really am.

[01:30:58] Stephanie: You’re not manifesting something that isn’t true. You are reminding yourself of who you are.

[01:31:04] Marcus: Yeah. There’s a difference between pretending I’m a saint and reminding myself that I’m a saint. So throughout the day I say, oh, let’s pretend you’re a saint right now and act like that, that’s one thing. But if I say, you know what the Bible says, you’re a saint and you should live a life worthy of the calling you’ve received. Maybe right now I should think about how a saint would handle this and see if it changes the way that I act? So there is some truth to this idea of reminding ourselves of these things. But calling it psychobabble is not correct because it implies we’re pretending, and there’s nothing pretend about this.

[01:31:38] Stephanie:  Well, and with any good thing, you can push it to a limit that is twisted or whatever. So you could say, oh, I’m only a saint and I’ve never sinned, or I never was sinner.

[01:31:50] Marcus: Like, I wasn’t a saint Tuesday because I had a really bad day, but I am a saint today. That is not how it works because it’s a title.

[01:31:57] Stephanie: All right, let’s see. I have a question to pull from one of our listeners. Do you have anything else you wanted to say before I pull it?

[01:32:07] Marcus: I will get there.

[01:32:08] Stephanie: Okay. So this person says, “The phrase in the Lord’s prayer, lead us not in temptation, has puzzled me. Could you help clarify what this actually means? It sounds like God would intentionally lead us to be tempted.”

[01:32:24] Marcus:  It does, doesn’t it? There are some things in the Bible that when you first read them you’re going, say what? Especially in English it’s like, that can’t really be what it’s talking about here. So let me just give you some parallel verses that maybe will help shed some light on it. In Matthew 26:41, Jesus says, “Watch and pray so that you don’t fall into temptation.” And basically it’s like, don’t lead yourself into temptation. But what is the way that we do this? By watching and praying we stay out of temptation. So what is the Lord’s prayer doing? It’s modeling what that looks like. God, don’t lead me into temptation. Meaning I am watching and praying in the Lord’s prayer, I want my eyes to be open so I don’t fall into this temptation.

Another passage similarly is 1st Corinthians 10:13 which says, that no temptation takes you except what is common to man. God’s faithful and he won’t give you something more than you can handle, he’ll always show you the way out. But again, how does he show you the way out? Part of what the Lord’s prayer is modeling is when I say, Lord, lead me not into temptation, part of what I’m asking is open my eyes to see what is a temptation and what isn’t.

And we see something similar to that in 2nd Peter 2:9 which says, the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials. Well, that word trials and temptation is the same word. It’s a Greek word, Peirasmos. Trial or temptation are both legitimate translations of the same word. Now, some people take this to mean that we’re saying, God, don’t let me go through suffering. And this is sort of what Jesus prayed even in the garden of Gethsemane when he prayed, if I don’t have to go through this Peirasmos, I’d rather not go through this Peirasmos. But in this case we’re essentially praying, God would you open up my eyes so that I recognize the pitfalls? Because the next line clarifies it.

There’s also a poetic element here. So it says, lead me not into temptation, but deliver us from, not temptation, it says, but from the evil one. He’s the hunter who was laying the snares. So it’s like, you’re my shepherd, we’re on this journey, don’t lead me into one of the hunter snares here, but in a sense lead me around it and open my eyes to it. But there are also times when we don’t avoid temptation just because we recognize it, but God literally steers us in a direction where we don’t face certain things. And that’s a legitimate prayer too. It’s like, God led me on a path today where I don’t even have to face something that’s going to be overwhelming for me, that I’m not going to be able to handle. This is a long explanation.

[01:35:07] Stephanie: No, this is great.

[01:35:08] Marcus: One explanation I think of here is when the Israelites came up out of Egypt and God intentionally did not lead them on the shortest route into the promised land. And he does this so they might face a battle they couldn’t handle. And so in a sense, we’re praying to God, which battles can I handle, which battles can I not? Which path should I be on today? So he didn’t just open their eyes to oh, there’s a battle here you can’t handle. He literally led them on a different path so they wouldn’t have to go through that.

[01:35:41] Stephanie: He took them through boot camp first.

[01:35:42] Marcus: Yeah, it’s not that they had no trials or that they had no temptations. We’re basically saying there is a hunter out there who wants to enslave me, don’t let that happen. Whether that is opening my eyes or whether it’s guiding me on a different path. And so it’s sort of modeling this idea of let’s watch and pray so that we don’t fall into temptation.

[01:36:07] Stephanie:  I haven’t personally exegeted that exact text, but it also makes me think of your own ownership in it. You’re saying the watching and praying, but to me it’s almost like putting my trust in him saying, okay, Jesus, I don’t want to be tempted. I’m putting my eyes on you and I trust that you’re going to not lead me in this path. And I trust wherever you take me. And so it’s the relational aspect too, is how I read it.

[01:36:39] Marcus:  Yeah. Something relational about prayer, shocking.

[01:36:44] Stephanie: Well, hey, before we get to the end of the episode, I’m going to want some final thoughts from you. And also at the conference we had a bunch of lovely school of ministry students and graduates praying with people. They were practicing what they went through the school of ministry to do, which is their prayer ministry certification. I just want to give a shout out that the applications for the next cohort are still open. That cohort is going to start up in January, and you can come to our website and find out all the prerequisites you need, and all the details there. It’s https://deeperwalk.com/som

[01:37:28] Marcus: I gotta tell you, every time I see that word, I want to rearrange the letters so it spells wisdom. Because all of the letters of wisdom are in that, but it just needs to get rearranged. It’s really hard not to change it, but it is what it is.

[01:37:41] Stephanie: That’s amazing. Well, and just to spell it out it is Deeper Walk International School of Ministry is what it would be spelled out, but then we shortened it. So it’s https://deeperwalk.com/som If you are interested, you want more information, go there. It’s an awesome group of people and you get really good, good learning. So, Father, any closing thoughts on our title of saint?

[01:38:08] Marcus: So one of the first people who really brought this to my attention was Neil Anderson. It was his writings back in the early nineties where I hadn’t really thought about this, I’ll be honest. The only thing I’d ever been taught was, you’re a sinner saved by grace. And I’m like, well, that makes sense, I know I sin. I know I have impulses to evil that I have to overcome. So I guess my core identity is sinner. And it was the first time anybody said to me, take a look at the New Testament and see, does it actually call you a sinner? I realized that no, that is not the preferred terminology in the New Testament. In fact, I have a friend who went through a lot of AA where you have to get up and you say, hi, my name is Marcus, and I am an alcoholic kind of thing. And someone challenged him on that. He said, no, you’re not an alcoholic, that’s not your identity. You’re actually a saint.

And at first he thought that was heresy, he was so upset. He’s like, how can you even say something like that? So he did something interesting. He actually went home and read Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians that afternoon. And by the time he was done he was like, wait a second. The title that’s used by me throughout here is saint or holy one. He’s right it never says, you addict, you sinner. And that’s one of the challenges we have, is we too often define ourselves by what I call our “malfunctions.” We too often define ourselves by our malfunctions.

And God wants us to define ourselves by what he has done for us. And what he’s done for us is adopt us, change our citizenship, and give us a new title. He said, let these things define you. Let them be the foundation of your life and live from there. And my friend said it changed everything for him in terms of his battle with alcohol. Seeing himself as a saint had much more power in his life than seeing himself as an alcoholic.

[01:40:00] Stephanie: Yeah, that will literally preach. Very good. We’re good?

[01:40:07] Marcus:  We’re good. That was my last thought on this, not that I have no more thoughts.

[01:40:11] Stephanie: Your final thought. That was a great concluding thought. Well, thank you Father, and thank you all for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk exists to make heart focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more. And if you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review, and share with your friends.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.