Proving the Power of Christ’s Resurrection in Our Lives — Santosh Poonen

The Responsibility of Every Member in the Body of Christ

It's important for us to know that all of us have a responsibility. What the world will taste is not, what the world will ultimately need to taste, is not what they see and hear, but the spirit in our midst.

It's the spirit in our midst that makes the messages meaningful and the memory verses meaningful and the singing and the praying. And the spirit in our midst is determined by every single one of us, from the youngest to the oldest.

And so if you think you don't have a part to play, if you think, well, I can stay home this Sunday, I've just got a slight headache, I'm not supposed to speak anyway, I don't have any visible ministry, I don't need to be there, then it means you really haven't understood the body of Christ.

It means you haven't seen that God is doing a spiritual work. It would be like the heart saying, I don't need to pump blood today, I don't need to move to speak. You think the tongue can speak if the heart's not pumping blood?

If the inner workings of the body are not functioning well, I could sit here and try to move and I would just collapse. And so there are a few that God calls to be his mouthpiece, a few here and there in the inner church, a few teachers.

In fact, James says, don't be many teachers, but all of us, if you really believe God has called us to be knit together in this local body, we have a responsibility. You do, brother, sister, child, every single one of you, whatever age you are, if you're born again and you're a part of God's family, we must be a church that proclaims it, that everybody in this church who's a member of the church has a responsibility.

And you must know that. Think if you can communicate to your children at a young age that they must pray for the meeting. I love that our children pray for the meeting. More children pray than adults in our morning prayer time before the meeting starts.

It's wonderful. I hope more adults would pray, by the way. But it's good that the children pray because it shows that they recognize my prayer is going to make a difference. Pray, Lord, I pray, Lord, that the meeting will go well.

Yes. Do you think God heard that prayer? Absolutely. And do you believe that the meeting will go according to His plan because God heard the prayer of a little child sitting in this room? A simple prayer of faith.

Oh, what a difference it'll make. I think it was Sadhu Sundar Singh who said, you know, why a local church? Why do we need a local church? Isn't it, oh, it's one body? Yes, it is. He said it this way.

It's a beautiful picture. I've never forgotten that. You know, water comes from rivers and springs and lakes and oceans. But when you want a cup to drink, want water to drink, you need a cup. And the local church is like a cup.

Water that can be touched and tasted because not all of us can go to the river or go to the lake. We need an expression of that same water. Now, it's not our water. We didn't manufacture it. We're not the spring.

Jesus Christ is the spring. But we want to be that little vessel that's being filled from the ocean that is God, the spirit of God, the river of life, literally, I mean spiritually, the river of life, whether that's our name or not, that we're being filled and they come and they can taste it.

They want to know the same water. And when you tell somebody, somebody comes to your house and you say, and they ask you for something to drink, you don't point them to the Thompson River and say, hey, you can go over there and drink it.

You say, yeah, I've got a water, a cup right here. You can have it. It comes from Little Thompson Water, the stream or the river that's flowing through town. But here's a cup you can actually have right now.

That's what River of Life Christian Fellowship must be, a cup of water that's being filled, each one of us representing that. Can you be a cup, a little cup even, child, brother, sister? Can you be a little cup?

If a visitor comes and there's a child your age, can you be a cup to that child or a young person your age? Can you be a cup where you ask God, I'm speaking primarily to the local church here now, those are members, that you don't have to be an extrovert to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

I hope you know that. You don't have to be an extrovert. You need the power of the Holy Spirit to be a witness. And so you can, shy as you are, say, well, there's a visitor in our church meeting today and never seen him before.

There's a child maybe your age or a young person your age, and you say, Lord, I'm not an extrovert. God says, okay. That means you have to depend on the power of the Holy Spirit even more. They say, Lord, fill me, fill me this little cup.

All I can do is go to that person and just ask them what's their name and where are they from and not with any friendly motive or to try to add people to this church or anything like that. Like a lot of churches do.

You know, I've been in churches where they throng you to try to get you to, oh, a visitor. Maybe they'll become a part of the church. If God wants you to be a part of this church, he'll make it clear to you.

But what we want to do is to give you a cup of water, the life of Jesus that we've been drinking all week and tasting all week. And we want to pour that out into you if you're thirsty, if you're in need in some way.

We may not know all the answers, but we hope you'll taste Jesus. That's what we want to testify to those online even if they never see us face to face and those that visit us here. Welcome visitors. There are a few of you here I see.

God bless you. And I pray that you will taste the life of Christ in us. We're not perfect. We're very simple. Nothing attractive about us, but we really seek to exalt Jesus. That I know and I've tasted in this church.

Prophetic Responsibility and False Peace

I'd like to begin by turning to a verse in Jeremiah chapter six. If you will turn there with me, please. I'm very mindful of our responsibilities, responsibility as elders and those of us who speak God's word in the church.

If you're one whom God is using to even speak for five minutes or so, whether it's after the meeting or during the open sharing time or you have a ministry to share something from here, regardless, and especially for those of us who are teachers, we have a responsibility because I'm challenged by the life of the prophets in the Old Testament because you see that most of them, actually all of the true prophets of God were unpopular because they spoke the things that people didn't want to hear.

And in Jeremiah six, we read verse 13, from the least of them to the greatest of them. Everyone is greedy for gain, Jeremiah six, verse 13. And from the prophet, even to the priest, everyone deals falsely.

Look at that. The prophets and the priests were the ones who were supposed to be responsible to lead God's people, to guide them to the true God and to keep them away from false gods. But they were the ones who were dealing falsely, it says, and they were telling lies.

That's the literal meaning there. They have healed the brokenness of my people superficially. What lies were the prophets telling? And I believe, dear brothers and sisters, if you pay attention to Christendom, this is going on in Christendom even today.

Prophets and priests dealing falsely with God's people, telling lies. What lies? They heal the brokenness of my people superficially. That means they say, it looks like cancer, but let's just put this little ointment on top of it and the boil will go away.

It's all right. It's all right. They heal the brokenness of my people superficially, that means something is fundamentally wrong inside, but they're afraid of losing that person, mostly because that person maybe brings a lot of money to the church.

And so they're afraid of offending that one person who contributes a lot or has a lot of saying. They're a powerful person. They're afraid of losing them. And so they say, peace, peace, but there is no peace.

Ezekiel says the same thing, I think chapter 13 or something. Interestingly about Jeremiah and Ezekiel, you know that both of them were killed. We're not told in the Bible how, but history tells us that Jeremiah, after the captivity in Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar took the people of Israel into captivity.

Jeremiah was left behind, maybe because he was too old. And then eventually he went to Egypt and preached there and tried to draw people there to God, to tell them about the true God. And eventually he was killed in Egypt, not by the Egyptians, by the Jews in Egypt, whom he offended.

The religious people who were also in Egypt, they were the ones that killed Jeremiah. The Egyptians were okay with him preaching them. It was the religious Jews who killed Jeremiah. Same thing happened.

I think they, one of them was stoned and the other was thrown off, I forget exactly. But Ezekiel, the same thing. He was in Babylon and he preached to the Jews in Babylon, the religious Jews in Babylon.

And he said, I don't care if all the other prophets will say, peace, peace. There is no peace for you in sitting in Babylon, Ezekiel said. And so who killed him? He also died a martyr's death at the hand of the Jews in Babylon.

The Babylonians didn't kill him. It was the Jews. You see the same thing in Jesus' time. It wasn't the Romans that killed him. They were the ones that actually put the nails into his hands. But the ones that sent him to the cross were the religious Jews, people who said they believed in God, the true God.

He is the true God, Jehovah. He's the true God. We call him Father today. And it was those people, the religious people of all the true prophets that killed them, all the way into including Jesus Christ, who is the captain of our salvation.

Testing Easter Traditions by Scripture

And I'm saying this because, you know, today is a day that a lot of people celebrate Easter in the world and in Christendom, whether you call it Easter or Resurrection Sunday or whatever name for it. I think most of you, if not all of you know that there's no evidence of the early church, the apostles celebrating Easter or Resurrection Sunday.

It came in the second or third century, as far as we know, after pagan people converted to Christianity. And that's why you see that both Christmas and Easter are tied to the sun. It's the winter solstice around December 22nd or 25th that was turned into the birth of Christ.

It's the birth of the sun, really, coming back, the end of, you know, that the sun starting its journey back up north, physically, that is, the earthly sun, I mean, the universal sun, not the earthly sun, the physical sun.

And likewise, with Easter and the springtime and the kind of the freshness of life coming back, whether their intentions were good or not, we don't know. It's not for us to judge. But regardless, what has become commonplace in Christendom today is to adopt, is to just because they've done it for hundreds of years, that's what they do.

We just do it because it's done. And I believe God has called us, wants us to test these things that are the traditions of men and people with His Word, not to judge other people. Now, it's not a message about whether you should celebrate Christmas or Easter.

If you do, it's up to you. That's fine. But let's examine all of this in the light of God's Word. And firstly, we're never told in Scripture to celebrate either of these things. Jesus' birth date could easily have been recorded.

It's the Gospel of Mark, I think, that is quite likely given through the account of Mary and Peter. And yet, in writing that account, Mark says nothing about what day Jesus was born. Don't you think Mary knew it?

Of course she did. Says nothing about it. Don't you think the apostles knew exactly what date? I mean, you look at the way dates are recorded in the Old Testament. I've been reading again Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers.

How many dates are recorded? That was in the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, if you really believe, we will call it to be a new covenant-minded church. We'll realize that God has intentionally left out the date of Jesus' death and His resurrection.

The one thing He does say to remember, He says, remember this, is the Lord's table where we partake of the bread and the cup. It says, do this in remembrance of me, we read in 1 Corinthians 11. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 11.

Actually, we'll look at that verse very quickly. This is what we are called to remember. 1 Corinthians 11 verse 23, for I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread.

And when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, He took the cup also after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. He says it twice. And then He says it a third time, as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.

So, we're never told to celebrate Christ's death or resurrection. We're told to remember it and partake of it. And if I'm remembering Christ's death and resurrection in a way that I'm not partaking of it, then I have a false Jesus.

And the reason I said this, I started by talking about how the prophets in the old days said, peace, peace. I receive a lot of greetings around this time from friends all over the world, different people greet me on Easter because they know I'm a Christian and it's a common thing to do, whether it's from Christians or unbelievers.

And again, please don't understand, I'm not here to point a finger at anybody or judge anybody. But the point of what I'm getting at in this message is that let's test ourselves to see whether we know the power of Christ's resurrection and not just know His resurrection.

And there's a sense in which it's popular to talk about Easter and talk about resurrection and talk about Jesus' death and all that this time of year in traditional Orthodox or even in evangelical Christendom, and yet not experience the power of His resurrection.

And that's the danger. And there could be a sense of, oh, peace, peace, it's Easter time, it's a time of peace. Christmas time is a time of peace and there's no peace. And let's not give people the false impression that there is peace just because it's Easter, just because it's Christmas when there is no peace.

Now, it's unpopular and we may be hated and people might reject us or throw reproach on us and I don't know what else they might do like they did to the prophets who were bold and said, no, there is no peace.

No matter how much you say there is peace, there is no peace. When you read the true preaching of resurrection, which I'd like us to look at a little bit today. First of all, you see, for example, in Acts 17, if you turn there with me, Acts 17, we'll read verse 31.

This is Paul preaching on Mars Hill to unconverted people who didn't know God. Acts 17 verse 31, he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through the man whom he has appointed.

We know that man is Jesus. Having furnished proof to all by raising him from the dead. Paul talked about the resurrection of Jesus right there. And when the moment they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer.

And others said, oh, we'd like to hear more about it. And I believe that you'll see this even in the world today. Remember when Peter was preaching on the day of Pentecost and he spoke about Jesus, he said, this man whom you crucified, God raised him on the third day and it says they were cut to the quick.

When we truly preach the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is a cutting to the quick. And I'll tell you, dear brothers and sisters, what concerns me about Easter or Resurrection Sunday is I don't see that preaching.

I don't hear the kind of Resurrection Sunday sermons that cut people to the quick that say, hold on, I'm just, this is all Easter eggs and bunnies and all that fun stuff and eating lamb roast, but there's no conviction of sin.

Now, if there is the true preaching of resurrection of Jesus, there will be the conviction of sin. Read again, the sermon that Peter preached in Acts 2, where he mentioned the resurrection of Jesus and they were cut to the quick.

And we truly preach Jesus resurrected, there is a conviction of sin. And there's even a reproach, you know, it says they sneered at him here. They're like, ah, don't preach that. Let's just go back to our celebrating Easter.

And that's how you know it's a false religion. Here's a verse, children, you must know well, Romans chapter 10. I say children because it starts there, but all of us must know it well too. Romans chapter 10, verse 9, how are we saved?

Most Christians will tell you, I'm saved because Jesus died for my sins. As far as I know, that's never recorded in scripture that way. What we are told in Romans 10, verse 9, is that you are saved because Jesus rose from the dead.

My sins are forgiven and I am saved from my sin because Jesus rose from the dead. Let's read it carefully. Romans 10, verse 9, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Plain and simple. Yes, Jesus had to die to be raised, but it's his resurrection that is the source of our salvation. So children, I hope at least you will be able to tell your Christian friends and your non-Christian friends, I'm saved because I put my trust in Jesus.

I believe in my heart that Jesus is Lord. I confess with my mouth and believe in my heart Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead. That's what we testify to, Romans 10, verse 9. And the danger, you know, in fact, the danger with this cyclical celebration of Jesus' death and resurrection is, you know, the one time where it talks about crucifying again Jesus?

It's a dangerous verse. I don't have time to show it to you, but you can look it up. Hebrews 6, verse 6. They crucify again Christ because they repeat. Now, maybe we should look at it. The false peace, saying peace, peace when there is no peace.

Why is there no peace? Because people continue to live in sin, continue to have bad attitudes, be unforgiving towards others, defeated by lust, defeated by anger, love money, love themselves, unwilling to, for example, be submissive to earthly authorities.

That's popular in American Christendom today. Just, you know, we don't submit to earthly authorities. I'm not talking about sinful things. Romans 13, verse 1. Those sorts of things. But in Hebrews 6, verse 6, it says, or verse 5, have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away.

That means they continue to live in sin and they fall away. It is impossible to renew them again to repentance since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame. Now, I'm not saying, therefore, that it's wrong to remember Christ's death.

Obviously, we do remember Christ's death. But if I remember it in a way that I have a careless attitude towards sin, then go ahead, put Jesus back on the cross. It was my sin that held Him there, we're just saying, until it was accomplished.

Having sung that and having realized that, would you do it again? Would you say, hold on, Jesus. I want to put you back on the cross, whether it's Good Friday or Good Thursday or whatever, by my sinful attitude, crucify again Jesus Christ.

So, we're not told that we're to celebrate even the resurrection of Christ or His death. We are partakers of it in the bread and the cup. But what the apostles were, we read multiple times in the book of Acts, where they were witnesses of His resurrection.

Experiencing Resurrection Power Rather Than Mere Knowledge

Acts chapter 1, you read this verse, Acts 1 verse 22. So, they had to decide who would be the 12th disciple. I don't believe he was the 12th apostle in the sense that, you know, it talks about the 12 apostles in the book of Revelation.

As you know, they ended up picking a man named Matthias. They drew lots and they picked him. This is before they were filled with the Holy Spirit. So, they didn't have the Holy Spirit to guide them. Today, elders and leaders aren't picked by lots or putting a name in a book and try to find who it is.

And that's not how you do it. The Holy Spirit has given us as a guide. But before the Holy Spirit came in Acts 2, in Acts 1, they were like, who should be the 12th? And they picked Matthias. And they said, how shall we pick who this 12th person should be?

They said, it must be somebody who, verse 22, beginning with the baptism of John until the day that he was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection. This was the test.

Are you a witness of his resurrection? Have you really seen that Jesus was risen from the dead? That's how they picked Matthias. And that's the rest of the 11 of them also had seen the resurrection. Now, others like Paul, Jude, and James, who were the brothers of Jesus, also saw Jesus.

They saw him crucified and they saw him risen. That's why they were eyewitnesses of his resurrection. Now, how about you and I? Have you seen the physical Jesus? No, we haven't. But we must be as certain of his resurrection as if we had seen him.

That's what it means to be a witness. To be a witness, can you testify? Think about it. I want to be slow with this. Can you testify with absolute certainty that Jesus Christ is risen from the grave, even though you never saw the empty grave?

Even though you've never seen the physical Jesus risen from the grave? Can you testify that? Now, it's not enough to say, well, yeah, I guess the preacher told me that. It's another thing to have experienced it.

And the only way you and I, my dear brothers and sisters and children, can be witnesses of Christ's resurrection is if it is experienced in our lives. If you are experiencing the resurrection life of Jesus in impossible situations of death, Christ bringing life out of death in your life, then you can say, yeah, I know the resurrected Jesus.

He's absolutely risen. But if it's just, oh, it's April, what is it, 17th, so it's Easter. I guess Jesus rose from the dead. Then you have the form of his resurrection and not the power. You know that verse in 2 Timothy chapter 2, no, chapter 3.

I believe many so-called Christians have the form of Christ's resurrection, but they have denied its power. Let me say it again. The only way you and I can be absolutely certain that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead is if his resurrection power and life is working in us.

If it's just knowledge, no. You're just imagining something. You're reading a fairy tale, and you will have no answer for the atheist who says, how can you tell me that this book is just not another fairy tale like all the other religious books?

How will you answer that? Do you need to go to apologetics school and become an expert in apologetics and analyze the Greek and the Hebrew? No. You need the resurrection power of Jesus in your life where you can say, it's my experience, brother, friend.

Let me tell you how Jesus has brought life into me in those areas that were dead. I used to be defeated by lust. I used to be defeated by anger. I used to be defeated by the love of money. I used to be unforgiving.

I used to have bitter attitudes, and he has brought life. Now you have the power of godliness, the power of resurrection. 2 Timothy chapter 3, realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come.

If you think times are difficult now, it's going to get worse. Not because the government will restrict us or anything like that. That's nothing. I mean, you think that's difficult? Not at all. Don't get caught up with all the other stuff that people get caught up with.

Difficult times are really going to come. I'll tell you what, people will talk about resurrection and Easter, but they won't have the power in their lives. That's what he's talking about. Read it carefully, but I'll just skip down to verse 5.

Holding to a form of godliness. See, he talks about lovers of self, lovers of pleasure, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, etc., and all those verses, and he says, I could summarize all of this. These people are disobedient to parents.

They're arrogant. They're irreconcilable. They're unloving. They're malicious gossips. They're without self-control, brutal, haters of good, etc. He's not talking about unconverted people. These are people who are sitting in churches.

They hold to a form of godliness, and they have their Easter services, and they have their Good Friday services, and all of that, but they have denied its power. Holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power, it says, avoid such people as this.

Oh, but they talk about Jesus, and, you know, all this. Avoid such men who, if you sense that these people don't have the power of God in them, it's just language. It's just talk. The power of God is not in them.

Avoid them. Some people ask me, hey, why do you avoid certain people? I'll tell you, because the Bible tells me to. I don't want there to be even one command in the word of God that I disobey, and this is one of them.

The people that God wants me to avoid, I avoid. And I'm wary of holding of this. I'm wary of days like Easter and Christmas. Again, nothing against those days, or people who choose to celebrate it, if any of you do.

Nothing against those days, but I'm wary of it, because I see plenty of the form of godliness in Christendom on a day like today, and a time like this, and around Christmastime. And it's especially, maybe we have to be especially on guard, that the danger is even greater, that the form of godliness will be there, the form of the resurrection will be there, the form of the death of Christ will be there, but we have denied its power.

Knowing Christ and the Power of His Resurrection

Paul's goal, you read in Philippians chapter 3, this is Paul writing towards the end of his life. Philippians was one of the last letters he wrote, second last or third last, as far as we know. Towards the end of his life, look at the ambition of his life.

Philippians chapter 3, we read in verse 10, you know he says earlier, I've, whatever things were gained, I've counted loss, I've, I counted as dung, I've suffered the loss of all things, verse 8, and count them rubbish, verse 9, that I may be found in him not having a righteousness of my own, etc.

And then we get to verse 10, why did Paul throw everything that he'd had into the dung heap, why? Verse 10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection. You see Paul, you know by this point, as far as I know, Paul had already seen Jesus.

You know he was taken up into the third heaven, and he saw Jesus. It says that least of all the apostles he was revealed, Jesus came to Paul physically. Paul saw Jesus. But Paul's testimony of the resurrection of Jesus was not because I saw him physically.

Otherwise he says, I don't need to know about Jesus' resurrection, I saw him. He says, no, I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the power of his resurrection. Paul's about 60 years old now, serving God for 30 years, after God turned his life around, and after 30 years of serving God, planting churches, writing inspired scripture, he says, I want to know the power of his resurrection.

I have not fully known it yet. Meanwhile, we have Christians today, who have done nothing compared to what Paul's done, and says, oh yeah, resurrection, right? That's around April time, we have the little lamb meal and all this stuff, and we get up on Sunday morning for the sunrise, and they don't know the power of his resurrection, like Paul did.

They don't have a burden for it, they don't have an urgency for it, to know the power of his resurrection. Knowledge versus power, this is very important. I think the entire world knows about Jesus' resurrection, whether they believe it or not.

They know. Yeah, this is the time when they say, Jesus came out of the grave and all that. Some people, so-called Christians, nominal Christians will say, yeah. You know, we've got even politicians, and everybody says, greets, happy Easter.

What's Easter? They'll say, yeah, Jesus rose from the grave. They know it. Do you think they really know the power? If it's not working in us, the life, the resurrection life of God is not in me. I know his power.

I know about his resurrection, but I don't know his resurrection. You know, it says in, let's look at this verse in 1 Corinthians 15. I'm showing you a lot of scripture because I don't want you to think that this is some idea I have or anything.

I had not planned to speak this, by the way, but the Lord laid a burden on my heart this morning to speak on this, so I'm answerable to him for it. You know, it says in 1 Corinthians 15 that, I think 2 Corinthians 4, first of all, he says that the God who raised Jesus from the dead will also raise us up, right?

2 Corinthians 4, 14. And he says here that Jesus is the first fruit in verse 20. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 19. First of all, if we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of men most to be pitied.

Listen to that. If you celebrated the resurrection of Jesus, but it did you no good in eternity, that means you'd got nothing out of Jesus' death and resurrection that you could take to eternity. When we stand before Jesus, we'll say, well, Lord, but every resurrection Sunday, I celebrated you, or I remembered your resurrection.

I knew about it. What do you have in you? What life do you have in you as a result of my resurrection? That's what he's saying here. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, but when I get to eternity, I have nothing of eternal value that came through Christ's resurrection.

Then he says, I feel you're more pitied than the person who never even knew about the resurrection. We are of all men most to be pitied. But he says, no, now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits.

Children, tell me if there are first fruits, what must come next? You said it. Yes, the second fruits. Who are the second fruits? You and I. Let's read it carefully. For now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.

For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. Came the resurrection of the dead, means who did it come to? To us. The resurrection of the dead was not for Jesus alone.

It was for you and I. Has the resurrection of life come to you? For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order, Christ the first fruits. After that, the second fruits, you can say those who are Christ's at his coming.

So he will raise us up also to eternal life. Now he goes on to say, this is a way of dishonor. It's a way of reproach. You read in verse 42. In other words, it's sown in dishonor. It's sown in reproach.

That means it's a way that the world rejects, but it's the way of eternal life. My dear brothers and sisters, this is the essence of what I'm, the burden of my heart this morning is, have you received the resurrection power of Christ in your life?

Are you receiving it in increasing measure? Can you say, as it says in verse 21, for since by Adam came death, and so you got death through Adam. How did you get the law of sin and death? You know, the children just memorize that verse for us.

The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. That means that once upon a time, I was in bondage to the law of sin and death. How did you get that? Because you were born to your parents.

Now don't blame your parents. You blame Adam and then realize you have to blame yourself as well. So we were born according to, bound by the law of sin and death. And so I got that. Can you say the law of death came into the power of death?

It was in your body? Of course. Yeah, I know it. When my desire said, grab that, eat the last cookie that's left. I did it without thinking of others. When somebody said something to me, I did it in return.

I returned evil for evil. That's death. That's the law of sin and death operating in my body. You didn't even have to try. It just came to you by birth because you were born in death, born in sin, born into the flesh.