Mike Bickle emphasizes the transformative power of understanding our identity in Christ, as outlined in Romans 6. He explains that true transformation begins with knowing who we are in Christ and drawing on the spiritual wealth available to us through our legal position as new creations. Bickle highlights that while our spirits are made new at salvation, our emotions and behaviors require ongoing renewal through the Word of God and the Holy Spirit's presence. He encourages believers to acknowledge their identity and the power of the Holy Spirit to experience true change in their lives. The sermon calls for a deeper understanding of our legal position in Christ to access the fullness of God's grace and power.

Well, in paragraph 8, Romans 6 gives us details on how we are to access and experience the power of God in our life in a practical way. So that's a chapter if you're not familiar with, you want to say note to self, this is a must-know chapter. Paul tells us what was made available to us because of what Jesus did on the cross for us. Now one of the main biblical principles in the New Testament is that transformation begins by knowing who we are in Christ. The transformation of our heart, the beginning place is by knowing. And so we want to put time and effort in learning who we are in Christ. Another way to say it is by seeing ourself in the way that God sees us in Christ. Romans chapter 6 verse 11, this verse, it kept, it captures the idea. This is one of Paul's major points of emphasis in the New Testament in terms of how transformation happens. He says, reckon yourself to be alive to God in Christ Jesus. Now there's a number of principles locked into that one simple little sentence there. Now when he says reckon yourself, that means know it. You're supposed to see it, to understand it. But it's a little bit more than that. The word reckoning is an accounting term. The idea is that Jesus put his wealth on your account. But you have to draw on that account in order for it to affect to affect your everyday life. Romans chapter 6 is like the bank statement. And we read the bank statement, we understand the wealth, and then we draw on the wealth because you can have wealth in your bank, spiritually speaking, but never draw on it. You can live in poverty. That's bad. And then that's what Paul's exhorting us not to do. Romans chapter 12 verse 2, he went on to say the same thing as reckon yourself. He said it in a different way. He said you're transformed. Your emotions are transformed by renewing how you think. So in Romans 12, he's actually looking back to Romans 6. He's referring to what he wrote earlier. And he's in essence saying the same thing as reckon yourself to be alive to God. He's saying fill your mind with the truth of Romans chapter 6. As our mind is renewed, our emotions are transformed. And when our emotions are transformed, our behavior is changed in a most consistent and deep way. Now we can change our behavior even when our emotions are in a storm because if we don't restrain our behavior, you end up going to jail if you don't restrain your behavior. But Paul is talking about something more. He's talking about inward transformation that will actually lead to more consistent and deeper change in terms of our behavior. Now our emotions are not transformed by trying harder to transform them. You can't grit your teeth and really put effort and make fear go away or make rejection go away or make lust go away or make anger go away. When anger rises up in our heart, we can't just say no and then all of a sudden anger goes away. It doesn't work that way. So I encourage people not to try harder but to see more clearly. Put their energy into understanding who they are in Christ and then drawing on that. Not trying to control your emotions. Again you can control your outward behavior. That's different than controlling your emotions. You can't control them by an act of your will but we control our emotions. We transform them or they are transformed by seeing more clearly who we are in Christ. Now in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul makes a very dramatic statement. He says if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. He goes on to elaborate on what it means to be a new creation. The implications of it. He says two things right here in verse 17. He goes, the old things that were true about you while you were an unbeliever, they are now passed away. All things have become new. Now again he's developing the idea of being a new creation in Christ. Verse 21, he says that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Now here in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul is really doing Romans 6 made simple. I mean Romans 6 is the legal document of our transfer of wealth. The wealth that's been put into our spiritual account that we're to draw on. 2 Corinthians 5 summarizes it in very simple terms. It kind of gets right to the point. Now he says in this very dramatic statement, if anyone is in Christ, anyone, no matter how messed up you are before, how many demons that you were involved with, how much pain and anger and rage, what you were addicted to, anyone. He says if you come to Christ, the day that you're born again, not a couple years later, the moment you're born again, you are a new creation. That's a very big statement that Paul's making. Old things passed away. All things have become new. Now when I first read this years ago as a young man, I said, Paul, surely this can't be true. Because I didn't understand Paul was talking about our spirit. When he says all things are made new, he was talking about all things pertaining to your spirit. Because as you know, our human makeup is threefold. We're spirit, soul, and body. Our spirit is different from our soul, which is our personality and our body. And I didn't know the distinction. And I thought that Paul was saying that everything passed away and everything was new in my soul. I go, no, I still have the same thought patterns. I still have the same negative emotions. I have the same anger. I have the same lust. I have the same fears. What do you mean everything has passed away? Surely you're exaggerating. Well, Paul wasn't exaggerating. I was just misunderstanding. When he says he is a new creation, he says your spirit man, the born again spirit is radically recreated. It's a new creation. Our soul, our mind, and emotions are not new, but our spirit man is new. And I'm going to give the implications of that. He says the old things passed away. All things are new. And then he gives the high point in verse 21. He says we, that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Beloved, I can't imagine anything more dramatic than that statement. You have become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, not your mind and emotions are not. He didn't say your mind and your emotions are righteous. He didn't say your body is righteous. He said, you are the true. You is who you are in your spirit. The fullness of God's righteousness was given to your spirit the day you were born again. Now you, that righteousness is so complete that even God can't improve it. God cannot improve it because it's his own righteousness and his own righteousness is perfect and eternal. The very righteousness of Jesus was given to you. Well, if you think about it, the Holy Spirit couldn't dwell in you unless your spirit was righteous because the Holy Spirit couldn't dwell in an unrighteous context. So it has to be as righteous as God or the Holy Spirit would not be comfortable or it would not be, it would not be possible for him to dwell in us. Beloved, this is the most amazing truth. The spirit of God, when he came to dwell in you at your, the day you were born again, will live in you forever, forever and forever. It will never change. You are instantly made righteous. Let's look at paragraph E when he says the old things, he means the old things pertaining to your spirit, the position of your spirit. Before you were born again, before you came into relationship with Jesus, you were under condemnation. The wrath of God was over your life. If you'd have died, you'd end up in hell because you would pay the penalty of your own sin. There was nobody who paid it for you. You're on your own until you came to Christ, but not only were you under condemnation, there's a number of implications. We're not going to go through them all. They're all glorious. You were powerless in regards to sin at the heart level, the emotional level. What do I mean by that? It means there's many different sinful emotions, but I'll just take the emotion of anger. When anger would rise up in our heart before we were born again, we had no power inherent in our human ability to make that anger dissipate instantly. We couldn't make it go away. The anger in us would ride the storm. The storm would just run its course, is what I mean. Whether it was five minutes or five hours or five days, the anger would run its course like a storm and then it would dissipate. And then a little while later, the anger would hit again. A little while later, the anger would hit again. I'm talking about at the emotional level. Same with lust. Lust would rise up. Lust would run its course for a few moments or a few hours or whatever. Then it would dissipate. Then it would show up again. And there's many different negative emotions you could put in this example. You had no ability in your human makeup to make it go away in your emotions. Now, external in your behavior, your physical activity, you could restrain it. Because again, if you don't restrain it, you go to jail. You got ability to restrain it at physical level, but you don't have the ability to dissipate it and to cause it to leave at the emotional level. There's no power in you, no matter how educated, no matter how disciplined, no matter how much protocol and how polite you are and how sophisticated. That anger, you have no ability over it in yourself. Well, the day you were born again, a new power came in you. Let's look at paragraph F. Paul says, the same thing, all things become new. He says the same thing as old things passed away. He's saying the same thing, but from the opposite point of view. When he said, old things passed away pertaining to your spirit, all the negative. But he says that the same thing, now the positive. He says everything is new. That's part of being a new creation. Well, instead of condemnation, you're not only accepted by God, but you're actually enjoyed by God. You're standing before God in the same way that Jesus and His humanity stood before God when He was on the earth. It's the most remarkable reality. Your former powerlessness, your inability to challenge negative emotions, that has passed away. You now have the ability to challenge negative emotions. You may not use that ability, but you do have it to effectively challenge negative emotions. You have the authority now to use the name of Jesus. You can speak the name of Jesus, use His authority, releasing the works of God and hindering the works of the devil. Before you were in Christ, you had no ability to stop the enemy's attack. When a spirit of fear came on you in the night, you just had to write it out. You know, just a few moments or a few hours, and leave, and like, oh, that was weird. Now, in the name of Jesus, you can command it to go. You have the indwelling spirit living in you. Paragraph G and H, you'll notice I have two terms. Our legal position, our living condition. These are two terms or concepts that describe our relationship with God through Christ. Our legal position, our living condition. They're two facets of our relationship with God. Paragraph G, our legal position describes it's our bank account. It's our spiritual bank account that we're supposed to reckon, that we're supposed to see the wealth that's being given to us. Our legal position describes how God sees us and how He relates to us through Christ. He sees us and relates to us in His presence, before His eyes, and the same way He sees to Christ and relates to Him. We are fully accepted. We're fully in the family. We're not kind of in the family. We're not on probation. We are fully accepted in His sight. Our legal position describes how God sees us and the benefits we have because of what Jesus did on the cross for us. Our legal position is what happened, what the Holy Spirit did in our spirit for us. You know, the day you were born again, the Holy Spirit did something very, very dramatic for you. He came to dwell in you. 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 17. Paul said about the born-again believer. He that's joined to the Lord's one Spirit with God. I mean, can you imagine the implications that your spirit is one with God? The uncreated God by the Holy Spirit is one with you. Now, you're not God and you're not uncreated. You're always the redeemed and you're never God, but His Spirit is one with your spirit. This is the most remarkable reality. Well, that's our legal position. That's what's on our spiritual bank account. That's what Paul says, reckon, draw on that account. Paragraph H, there's another dimension to our relationship with God called our living condition. Our living condition is what we actually experience in our everyday life. It's not what the Holy Spirit did in our spirit instantly the day we were born again. It's what the Holy Spirit's doing in our soul, our personality, our mind, emotion, will. It's how much we're actually experiencing. It's how much of the bank account we're drawing on, how much we're actually using of the great wealth that Christ gave us in our legal position. Now, it's very possible. Matter of fact, it happens all the time to have the fullness of grace in your legal position, but live in defeat in your living condition. Let me say that again. You can have the fullness of grace in your legal position. Your spirit man is full of God, but in your living condition, your everyday life to live in total defeat, meaning your mind and your emotions are not being renewed by the Holy Spirit. Now, some people are content. They're content with who they are in their legal position, and they go, I have everything in Christ in my legal position, and I don't care how I live and how much I experience. I go, no, I love who I am in my legal position, but beloved, I want to experience it in my living condition. I'm not content to have wealth in my bank account. I want to spend it. I want to experience it. I don't want just the spirit to dwell in my spirit. I want Him to move in my soul, my mind and emotions and will. Top of page two. Now, to understand the new creation, Paul said, you are a new creation. To understand it, we have to see that God created us, our human makeup in three parts, spirit, soul, and body. Man is a spirit, has a soul, and lives in a body. The real you is your spirit. You have a soul, a personality. You live in a body. Paragraph K. Your spirit is the place that God dwells in you right now. In this age, He dwells in you in fullness in your spirit. Again, your spirit is the real you forever. When you die, your body goes to the ground. The real you goes into the presence of God. Your soul is your personality. Now, you have elements of your personality in the age to come like now, but you'll have a lot better personality in the age to come than you do now. I mean, I know you're amazing right now, but you're really going to be something then. Now, your body has five senses. Our physical body is what gives us the ability, our spirit, the ability to interact with the physical world. If you did not have a physical body, your spirit could not interact with the physical world. That's why demons, which are fallen spirits, they want to inhabit a human being. Because if a demon inhabits a human being, they can have a far greater interaction in the physical world. And that's why they care about that. Now, many believers, they don't know who they are in their spirit. They are not trained. They don't understand what the Bible says about their spirit man. They're trained in their soul. They go to the university to get trained in their soul. They go to the gym to get trained in their body. But you have to go to the Bible to get trained in your spirit. Because the Bible is the only place that has understanding of what happened to your spirit man the day you're born again. There is no philosophy course, no religion course. There is no other source of information as to what happened in your spirit except for the word of God. And Romans 6, verse 1 to 10, gives more information than any other one passage of Scripture. Verse 1 to 10, which we're not looking at today, but that's the legal contract. That's the wealth that was transferred into your account. Paragraph M. Now, the challenge, the challenge of faith is this. We can't feel our spirit. Meaning, you can't with your five senses. You can't get a handful of your spirit and measure it, dissect it. You can't study it with your five senses, of your body or your emotions. You can't discern it because it is spirit. It's not flesh. And so, without the word of God giving us living understanding, we can't understand who we are in our spirit. We're completely ignorant. And many believers, because they don't read the word of God much, they live ignorant of who they are in their spirit, and therefore they never draw on the account. Therefore, their soul, their mind and emotions, continues in defeat year after year after year. They have this tremendous wealth. They don't know the wealth is there, and they don't know how to draw the wealth. So, they're spiritually rich, but practically they live poor. Paul tells us here in Colossians 3, he says your life is hidden in Christ. When he says your life is hidden, he's talking about your spirit, the real you. Do you know your life is so hidden that it's not just the real you is hidden from someone else, who you are in your spirit? It's actually hidden from you. Even you can't see the real you. You need the word of God as the roadmap. You need the word of God as the compass to understand who you are. The owner's manual is the only place you get insight on who you are in your spirit. And again, no place lays it out more systematically than Romans chapter 6, verse 1 to 10. We're looking just at verse 11, where Paul is saying in essence, in verse 11, reckon or draw on the truth from verses 1 to 10, paragraph N. Now, the gospel is the good news of salvation, of receiving God's righteousness in all three tenses. The gospel is about receiving the righteousness of God in all three tenses. The message of the cross, it's the same thing, which is the same thing as the gospel. Meaning, number one, in our justification, we received salvation fully of our spirit. Our the gospel message. That's only one-third of the salvation message. That's only one-third of the message of the cross. The second part of the gospel message is your living condition, that what he did for us on the cross, he wants to manifest in us, in our soul. What he does in our soul by the spirit, because of what he did on the cross, is the gospel. It is the message of the cross. But it doesn't end there. There's not only a past tense part of our salvation, our legal position, we're justified. There's a present tense, we're being changed. That is our salvation. There's also a future tense, our eternal exaltation. Our body is completely made new. Now, physical healing is a down payment of our glorified body in the age to come. The promise of a glorified body. Now, the reason this is important, because we want to be faithful witnesses of the message of the cross, and faithful witnesses of the message of the gospel. And to preach the gospel, we have to talk about all three levels, not just the introductory level. I talk to some people, they say, I preach the gospel, and all they mean is one third of it. I talk to some people, they go, I love the message of the cross. They only mean one third of it, the justification, the legal position, where the Lord wants us to experience it all. I'm not content with just the legal. I want to experience the living condition and the eternal exaltation. Again, the eternal, I want to live in the hope of that now, to affect my life, and I want to live in, I want God to heal my body now. That's part of the redemption of our body that is mostly in the future. Roman numeral two, our legal position. I'm not going to really go into this right now. I'm just highlighting that it's there. In Romans chapter five, verses here, paragraph A, verse 12 to 21. This is the clearest description of the truth of our legal position. Romans 5, 12 to 21, then in Romans 6, he gives the details of the principle he establishes in Romans 5. You can read that on your own if you want. You can read that later, but look at paragraph B. Paul comes at the end of Romans 5, verse 21 is the final statement of Romans 5, and he's laid out the truth of the legal position of human beings. Every human being is either in the legal position before God that Adam was in, or they're in the legal position before God that Christ is in. Every human being is in one of those two positions before God, and again, you can read a little bit more about that later, but here's Paul's grand crescendo. He ends Romans 5 with this high point. One of the most significant statements he makes in the entire book of Romans is chapter 5, verse 21. He says, let me tell you this. In the same way that you were under the reign of sin when you were in Adam, in that legal position, you are now in the reign of grace because you're in Christ. You were 100 percent under the reign of sin. Now you're 100 percent under the reign of grace. That's the great crescendo statement that he ends Romans 5 in. Then Romans 6, he unpacks it. Then the verse that we're considering this morning, he says, now reckon this to be true. Draw on your bank account as though this is true. Under the reign of sin, paragraph C, the condemnation has passed. The powerlessness has passed, et cetera, several things. Paragraph D, under the reign of grace, we have all the new position, a new power, a new nature, new insight, new destiny, et cetera. You can read that later. Let's look at top of page 3. A little bit more on the reign of grace. The day you're born again, you're 100 percent under the reign of grace. Instantaneously, that's the new legal position you were in in God's sight because of Christ. The way that God sees Jesus before him, legally, He sees you. And if you grasp that truth and you know that truth, you begin to draw on that truth. And I'm going to give you a practical way to do that in just a moment. Then your living condition will be transformed. More on the reign of grace. A, we are accepted by Christ, by God with affection. I mean, that's a subject, one of my favorite subjects in life. B, the indwelling spirit, you possess the indwelling spirit, living in your spirit the moment you're born again. Now, when the Holy Spirit came to live in you, Paul describes the impact or the result of the spirit living in you. He says in Galatians 5, 22 and verse 23, he says, in essence, he's going, do you understand that that person living in you has an infinite supernatural supply of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There's nine fruit or nine results of the spirit's activity in our life. Now, here's what Paul's, here's the point. The spirit in totality lives in your spirit. That means there's an infinite supply and a supernatural supply of peace in your spirit. That's good. That's in your bank account. Now, the challenge is, you want that peace to be in your soul, in your emotions. You don't just want it in your spirit, you want it in your soul. That's the challenge of faith. Paragraph one, the way that we access the spirit's power, so that his power goes from our spirit to our soul, and I'm breaking this down in kind of a mechanical way, just so you can grasp it, is simply by acknowledging his presence in your spirit and thanking him. Let me give you an example. When anger rises up in my emotions, instead of gritting my teeth, trying to make the anger go, or just letting the storm of anger run its course, what I'm supposed to do, I don't always do it, but I want to do it more. But the idea is, I turn my attention to the Holy Spirit dwelling in my spirit. I thank him for peace. I thank him for peace. I don't ask him for peace in my spirit, I thank him for peace. And when I do that, the most remarkable thing happens. The peace that's infinite and eternal, which is in the person of the Holy Spirit that dwells in my spirit, it actually, for a few moments, touches my soul. The anger dissipates. I can challenge the anger through that interaction with the spirit. It is as simple as acknowledging it and thanking him for peace. The storm of anger dissipates. Now, the anger will come back a little while later, and the peace will dissipate. I have to draw on that again in my interaction with the Holy Spirit. This is an amazing reality. I remember the first time this ever happened to me. Somebody taught me this. I was about 20 years old, not quite. And someone told me that if I wanted personal transformation, I had to understand Romans 6. A Bible teacher, my youth leader, told me that. I said, okay, I read Romans 6. I didn't like it at all. It was so confusing. I thought, oh, if I got to understand this to get changed, I'm never going to be changed. And I was fascinated and frustrated by Romans 6 for 10 years. I preached on Romans 6 more times the first 10 years of my ministry than any other passage of the Bible. I was trying to figure it out. My friends used to make a joke about it because I kept changing what it meant. And they said, Bickle, why don't you just go process it quietly? I was always teaching a new version of Romans 6 because I was trying to find out what it meant. I was fascinated and frustrated by this chapter. Well, a guy tells me, he says, well, the Holy Spirit actually lives in your spirit. If you'll acknowledge it, thank him for the peace that's inherent in his personality, he'll touch your soul. I said, really? I did it. I was angry. That peace came instantly, and the anger left. I was so excited. I couldn't believe it. I said, this is supernatural. The anger left. I said, ah, where'd it go? I was so excited. I went in the other room. I was at home. Again, I was in the home, not quite 20. I was so excited. I went to one of my sisters and just provoked her to get her mad, to test it, to see if it would work again. She got mad. But it didn't really work because I was so excited. It just didn't work. But don't worry. I had a chance a few hours later to do it for real. Anger rose up again. I said, Lord, this is remarkable. It's the same thing with kindness. It's the same thing with goodness. We can acknowledge the Holy Spirit's presence, and we're going to break this down some more in the weeks to come. Turn to the top of page four. Let's go to the middle of page four. It's paragraph E, or on some handouts, it's paragraph A, renewing your mind. I'm going to talk about how to apply this just in the next two minutes. Later on in Romans 10, we're still in Romans. Paul is now telling us in Romans 10 how to access the power of Romans 6. Very, very important principle. Very simple principle, but very, very important. He said in verse 8, the Word is near you. The Word of promise, the Word that contains the promises of God, but it's more than that. The Word that releases the power of God in your experience is what he's talking about. He goes, the Word that releases the power of God, it's not some mysterious thing. It's not seven steps to transformation. The Word is in your mouth. It's so close. If you say it, you'll write the check, actually, on your bank account. You'll say it. It's called confession. Confession. When we speak the truth of who we are, we speak the truth of our legal position to the Holy Spirit. We bring the truth, and we dialogue with the Holy Spirit. The power of that truth actually touches our emotions. Not only touches our emotions for a few moments, and that goodness, that good influence, it lifts, but as we draw on it again, and as we stay in dialogue and call on the Holy Spirit, it keeps touching our emotions. Jesus referred to that ongoing dialogue as abiding in Christ. Here in verse 8, he said, the Word that releases the power is so close, you don't have to go to some seminar. You don't have to have a heavenly visitation. It's there. He goes, say it. Verse 9, confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and you'll be saved. Now, he's talking about all three, all three tenses of salvation. A lot of people know this verse, but they limit it only to when they get born again. Then they quit using confession. They confess, Jesus, what? They go, I'm born again. And Paul is saying, no, this being saved is more than being saved from the penalty of sin on the day you're born again. You can be saved and delivered from the power of sin, and confession accesses the power of God. Thank the Holy Spirit. Talk to him about who he is in you, and draw on the contract that is laid out in Romans 6, verse 1 to 10. Let's go ahead and have the worship team come on up, if you would. Look at paragraph G. When condemnation rises up, you feel condemned, or shame, or hopelessness, or lost. And they challenge the truth, lust, and fear, and condemnation. You're not in Christ. You're a loser. You don't have no power. Turn your attention inward. Talk to the Holy Spirit about who you are. Speak the truth of who you are. It says, it is written, there is no condemnation. It is written, Holy Spirit, you are filled with love, joy, peace, and patience. You have peace. Thank you for your peace. It is written. You will direct me. You will lead me. My life is meaningful to you, and I tell you, you will feel different in your emotions. You do that over weeks, and months, and years. Your life will change. Look at paragraph F. Romans 6, verse 13. It's only two verses later. Paul says, even when you present yourself to God, when you offer yourself to God, let's just say, in your prayer life. Presenting yourself to God means more than your prayer life, but when you give yourself to God in your prayer life, Paul said, make sure when you offer yourself to God in worship and prayer, do it as somebody who's alive from the dead. Meaning, don't just come before God in your sincerity. Come before God on the basis of who you are in Christ. Don't spend your prayer time negotiating with God, talking Him into forgiving you. Go there as a person that's alive in Christ Jesus in your spirit. Now, don't go there based on what your track record is the last couple weeks. Paul said, when you present yourself to God, don't present it on the basis of how good you're doing this week. Present it on the basis of who you are in Christ. Change the dialogue. Make the dialogue about you interacting with Him, and not the dialogue about your failure. Talk to Him about who you are in Christ. Don't talk to Him about your sin that you've repented of, and ask Him to forgive you again. He's already forgiven you. It's off the record. Amen and amen. Let's stand. Now, you know, Miss Dean, I just keep on preaching until I hear that piano. So, the minute I hear the ding, ding, ding, then I know. I'm waiting on you. Are you waiting on me, or I'm waiting on you? No, no, I'm waiting on you. I just keep on going, man. I'm happy right now. I've talked myself into victory. I've preached this thing three times last night and two this morning. I'm in victory right now.