SPEAKER_02: Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.
SPEAKER_02: I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.
SPEAKER_02: Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm talking about suffering today.
SPEAKER_02: So everybody, turn to 1 Peter.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm going to tell you right now that the passage we're looking at is very, very difficult.
SPEAKER_02: It's so difficult that Martin Luther said, I don't understand what Peter's talking about here.
SPEAKER_02: And he was a theologian.
SPEAKER_02: So we're going to do the best that we can.
SPEAKER_02: We're going to navigate a few verses that are kind of obscure.
SPEAKER_02: And one of the beauties of going verse by verse through books of the Bible, like we do at the road, is that you're going to get the breadth of the teaching, in this case, of suffering, which is not popular today.
SPEAKER_02: You know, today we like to talk about victory.
SPEAKER_02: We like to talk about the miracles of Christ, and we should, and we do here.
SPEAKER_02: But part and parcel with life is also hardship, pain, and suffering.
SPEAKER_02: And if we don't understand that, we're not going to do very well in this life because you are going to go through hardship.
SPEAKER_02: And in our passage, Peter is navigating how to prevail through suffering.
SPEAKER_02: The entire book is on that.
SPEAKER_02: But I want you to look at verse 18 of chapter 3.
SPEAKER_02: For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.
SPEAKER_02: Being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Now hop down to chapter 4, verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind.
SPEAKER_02: So where he's going with our passage today is that he's going to present to us the power of Christ's suffering and how Christ suffered for our sins that we might be forgiven.
SPEAKER_02: But then he's going to say, arm yourselves with the same kind of attitude, bringing the sufferings of Christ into your suffering that you're going through.
SPEAKER_02: So let me give you four biblical truths about suffering.
SPEAKER_02: Let me give you four biblical truths about suffering.
SPEAKER_02: Number one, Jesus became our substitutionary sacrifice through his suffering and death on the cross.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, we cannot have a better substitute than one who is without sin, who went to the cross and became the legal sacrifice from God for us through his death on the cross.
SPEAKER_02: Men and women, there's no other way for the forgiveness of sins but through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Number two, and this is important, by our own personal suffering, we cannot add to or subtract from Christ's suffering.
SPEAKER_02: Now, why do I say that?
SPEAKER_02: Because it's important to understand that in Roman Catholic theology, as well as in certain aspects of Reformed theology, there has been a theology that when you go through suffering, you're adding to your redemption of forgiveness of sins in your life.
SPEAKER_02: I don't believe that that's accurate.
SPEAKER_02: I understand the passages it comes from.
SPEAKER_02: And as we move down, as we look through the passage, we'll understand where that has come from, but also why that's not what's happening here.
SPEAKER_02: So you're you everybody's gonna go through suffering.
SPEAKER_02: Some of you have been through horrendous suffering.
SPEAKER_02: You have been through the loss of a spouse, you've been through an ugly divorce, you've gone through abuse in your life, and it's and it's not fair.
SPEAKER_02: Just hear what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_02: That's completely not fair.
SPEAKER_02: But yet, in the midst of the mystery of our sufferings, Christ wants to meet us there.
SPEAKER_02: God wants to be invited into that, that his power might flow through us through the suffering that we go through.
SPEAKER_02: Number three, when we go through times of suffering, and we all do, it is comforting to realize that Christ has also suffered and can identify with our pain.
SPEAKER_02: Like no one else, by the way.
SPEAKER_02: Christ understands our suffering, he identifies with our suffering, and he wants to come alongside you in your suffering.
SPEAKER_02: And then number four, suffering, trials, and tribulations perfect us as we invite the power of Christ into our suffering.
SPEAKER_02: Let me read that again.
SPEAKER_02: It's really important.
SPEAKER_02: This is the theme of today's message.
SPEAKER_02: Suffering, trials, and tribulations perfect us as we invite the power of Christ into our suffering.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, if you don't invite the power of Christ into your suffering and allow him working in your life as you identify with his suffering as you go through suffering, then you can miss the whole point.
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, all of us have done that.
SPEAKER_02: And let me just say this up front that going through the pain of suffering, going through the misery of suffering, even being angry about your suffering is fine and okay.
SPEAKER_02: It's don't stay there though.
SPEAKER_02: So, in other words, you can have a camp out with your suffering, but don't build a tent.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, invite Christ into the campfire and say, Christ, I don't get it.
SPEAKER_02: I don't feel your presence, I don't understand why this has happened.
SPEAKER_02: But somehow in the work of your kingdom, I'm going to get the victory.
SPEAKER_02: I am going to be an overcomer.
SPEAKER_02: And it may not happen right now, and that's okay, men and women, because sometimes distance is the healer.
SPEAKER_02: We need some distance from our pain.
SPEAKER_02: And so don't hurry it up.
SPEAKER_02: Rather, embrace it with honesty and authenticity in your life.
SPEAKER_02: And here's what James says My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, but let patience have its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
SPEAKER_02: Now that's what the scriptures say.
SPEAKER_02: Church, that there's a perfection that's happening through suffering.
SPEAKER_02: And I was just recently talking to someone who's been through great loss.
SPEAKER_02: Who I went over to her house.
SPEAKER_02: Her and her husband are close friends of mine.
SPEAKER_02: I was over at their house with the family, and someone else was with the family who had just gone through tremendous loss.
SPEAKER_02: And I thought this is the perfect place for this individual to be because there's empathy, there's a sense of love because one who had been through great loss was comforting one who had just gone through great loss.
SPEAKER_02: And Christ is in the midst of that kind of family, that kind of relationship.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm calling this today the power of Christ's suffering.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm going to challenge you, church, the road, that you would invite the power of Christ's suffering into your suffering.
SPEAKER_02: And if you're not going through it right now, praise God, but you will.
SPEAKER_02: And some of you are here today and you're carrying deep stuff.
SPEAKER_02: It's been there for a long time.
SPEAKER_02: And because you haven't processed it yet, it holds you back from all that God wants you to be and to do.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, you do out of being.
SPEAKER_02: What we do is who we are.
SPEAKER_02: And who we are is in our heart the work of Christ in transforming us.
SPEAKER_02: Everybody here is on a journey.
SPEAKER_02: It's not about the arrival, it's actually about the journey.
SPEAKER_02: That's why we call ourselves the road.
SPEAKER_02: It's the road less traveled.
SPEAKER_02: It's not the destination is Christ, but that's a lifelong journey.
SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_02: So we're going to invite Christ into our suffering.
SPEAKER_02: For Christ also suffered once for sins.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 18, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: The key phrase here is once for sins.
SPEAKER_02: So we go through suffering, we're not adding to the redemption of Christ.
SPEAKER_02: We're not adding to salvation.
SPEAKER_02: Now write this down.
SPEAKER_02: If you're a note taker, I want you to write what I'm about to say down, because this is my thesis today.
SPEAKER_02: We aren't more holy through suffering.
SPEAKER_02: But we can become more holy and mature by how we handle suffering.
SPEAKER_02: We aren't more holy through suffering, but we can become more holy and mature by how we process our suffering.
SPEAKER_02: And I would say that what Peter seems to be getting to here, and this is not an easy passage, but I think what he's going to say here is that suffering has a redemptive effect if we allow the power of Christ's suffering into our suffering.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, we invite the cross in and we go, and this is not glib, pie in the sky, everything works together for good, sort of glibly making those statements, even though that's true.
SPEAKER_02: But it's processing our grief in the midst of suffering by inviting Jesus into that suffering and saying, Christ, I don't get it.
SPEAKER_02: I don't have to get it.
SPEAKER_02: I certainly don't feel it.
SPEAKER_02: But you, Jesus, I've got to have you here.
SPEAKER_02: I invite you in.
SPEAKER_02: You understand like nobody else what I'm going through.
SPEAKER_02: And so it becomes the cry of our heart for the fellowship of his suffering in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: Now, I do not know why, but under the inspiration of Scripture, Peter now goes into verse 19.
SPEAKER_02: It's like crazy.
SPEAKER_02: But that follow me now in what he says next.
SPEAKER_02: By whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison.
SPEAKER_02: Really easy passage here.
SPEAKER_02: Who formerly were disobedient when once the divine long-suffering waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls were saved through water.
SPEAKER_02: What is he talking about?
SPEAKER_02: So Martin Luther, the great theologian, said this about this passage.
SPEAKER_02: Quote, a wonderful text is this.
SPEAKER_02: And a more obscure passage, perhaps, than any other in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_02: So that I do not know for certainty just what Peter means.
SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot of different perspectives on this.
SPEAKER_02: When I was reading a commentary on 1 Peter by Wayne Grudham, he had, he gave five or five or six interpretations passage.
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to give you mine based in my understanding of the cosmic world.
SPEAKER_02: And I talked a little bit about this in the Cosmic War series, which was back at the beginning a few months ago.
SPEAKER_02: You can go back and look it up.
SPEAKER_02: But we're talking about the time of Noah and one of the most unique times in biblical and world history, by which, in Genesis 6, if you recall, spirits, cosmic spirits, left their abode in heaven and came down to the earth and had relations with the daughters of men, and then had a progeny of giants in the land called Nephilim.
SPEAKER_02: And so these Nephilim were giants in the land.
SPEAKER_02: We have archaeological evidence of these Nephilim.
SPEAKER_02: In the Gaza Strip, they found beds that are 10 feet long in archaeological discoveries.
SPEAKER_02: So I don't understand what was happening, and even a lot of different theologians don't understand.
SPEAKER_02: I know Luther probably was clueless on this particular issue because it's really come later through the level of archaeology that we have today in understanding this.
SPEAKER_02: But these Nephilim, these giants, were sort of half demon, half human.
SPEAKER_02: And if you're like spooking out right now, I totally get it.
SPEAKER_02: I don't usually talk about this every week, so come next week.
SPEAKER_02: I'm just telling you what I think he's saying.
SPEAKER_02: So, in some mysterious way, these spirits left their abode, came down to the earth.
SPEAKER_02: Some say the Nephilim are still on the earth.
SPEAKER_02: Now I'm not going to go there with that.
SPEAKER_02: But the reality is that when you look at Joshua, especially the first six chapters of Joshua, when God instructs Joshua to take out the tribes in the promised land, certain tribes, he tells them to completely wipe them out.
SPEAKER_02: Man, woman, child, everything, wipe them out.
SPEAKER_02: And then another one, he doesn't say that.
SPEAKER_02: And many believe that there were vestiges still of the Nephilim in the land, these giants in the land, and it's referred to in Joshua, there were giants, the sons of Anak were there, that still needed to be wiped out.
SPEAKER_02: So because of the uniqueness of that time in history where Satan working, leaving through cosmic spirits and came down to the earth, it appears to me that what we have is Jesus descending into Hades or descending into hell.
SPEAKER_02: That's what we say in the Apostles' Creed.
SPEAKER_02: That Christ descended into hell.
SPEAKER_02: He came down and he preached the gospel, which had not been preached before, though Noah was a type.
SPEAKER_02: So Noah is a type of Christ during the flood.
SPEAKER_02: And in that, this abode of these spirits that are now bound in a prison, a special prison in Hades, were preached the gospel as Christ died on the cross.
SPEAKER_02: Now listen, this is important because there's different perspectives, especially more in the health and wealth kind of gospel, that Christ suffered in hell.
SPEAKER_02: That is not scriptural.
SPEAKER_02: When I say Christ went to hell, he's not suffering.
SPEAKER_02: He's already suffered once and for all for all of our sins on the cross.
SPEAKER_02: He went down into hell and he preached the gospel to these demonic spirits that are imprisoned, as well as those spirits which had followed these demonic spirits.
SPEAKER_02: So here's what it says.
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting.
SPEAKER_02: Genesis 6.5 says, God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of his heart was only evil continually.
SPEAKER_02: So then he then brought the flood to cleanse the earth of that evil.
SPEAKER_02: And then for some mystery, we don't understand it all, Christ went down, he preached the gospel to those demonic spirits in Hades that are in that abode, that left their abode, and those who were so evil on the face of the earth at that time that every intent of their heart was only evil continually.
SPEAKER_02: It's probably the most impactful verse in all of the Bible about the evilness of man.
SPEAKER_02: It was so bad at that time that the entire earth, except for eight souls, were full of the evil of God.
SPEAKER_02: And then he says in verse 21, there is also an antity which now saves us, baptism, not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: So Jesus went down, and this is what I believe.
SPEAKER_02: I believe the first spirits, the first souls that encountered the resurrected Christ were not on the earth.
SPEAKER_02: They were actually in Hades.
SPEAKER_02: And if you recall of Lazarus and the rich man, that story, there's a story told of Lazarus being a beggar who's in the bosom of Abraham, a precursor to heaven, and then a gap.
SPEAKER_02: It speaks of a gap, and then there was the sons that are in Hades, suffering and experiencing what would ever be that pre-prophetic location of hell called Hades.
SPEAKER_02: So I believe that's where he went and he preached the gospel there.
SPEAKER_02: They saw the resurrected Christ before we did, before people on the earth.
SPEAKER_02: That's why, when you read the story of the resurrection, it says, soon as Christ died, remember, he's exhausted, he gives up his spirit to the Lord, and then it says there was an earthquake, and then the saints of old were resurrected.
SPEAKER_02: Remember that part?
SPEAKER_02: Like, what is he talking about?
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's because immediately, I believe, he went down, he announced it.
SPEAKER_02: And those that were on the side of paradise, which it's called, some of them were resurrected as an anti-type, a type of resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Well, then three days later, we experience the resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Now I know that sounds weird.
SPEAKER_02: And it's okay if you don't believe it all.
SPEAKER_02: Just get this point.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus rose from the grace.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's what you gotta get.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Now, why does he call it about, why does he mention the part about baptism?
SPEAKER_02: Because he's making and type an anti-type.
SPEAKER_02: It's a typology.
SPEAKER_02: And what do I mean by that?
SPEAKER_02: Okay, a type is when you use a person or a thing to be prophetic for the real thing.
SPEAKER_02: So he's saying that the flood is like unto the antitype, which is baptism.
SPEAKER_02: Now, this is really important because some of you come out of backgrounds.
SPEAKER_02: I know you come out of backgrounds where you've been taught baptism saves you.
SPEAKER_02: That's exactly what he doesn't say.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying that not the rinsing of the filth of the skin, in other words, not the physical act of baptism, but the baptism by which we go under the water, which is the cross and the death of Christ, working his work in our flesh.
SPEAKER_02: Then we come out of the water resurrected like Christ was resurrected.
SPEAKER_02: Because remember, it's important.
SPEAKER_02: Noah was not saved by the flood, he was saved by the ark.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so the flood took out evil, but the ark saved Noah and his family.
SPEAKER_02: Christ is the ark.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so when you when you publicly proclaim, and this reason I believe in immersion baptism, that you are gonna follow Christ from now on.
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna you're gonna be a Jesus follower.
SPEAKER_02: So we encourage you, get baptized.
SPEAKER_02: You go under the water.
SPEAKER_02: That's symbolic of, but it's also spiritual power of Christ's death on the cross, and then you're raised up.
SPEAKER_02: As in the resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_02: So the point here is that Christ suffered for our sins.
SPEAKER_02: He then died.
SPEAKER_02: He really died.
SPEAKER_02: He didn't swoon, he didn't sort of die, he died.
SPEAKER_02: And then he went down into Hades, proving that he had died.
SPEAKER_02: He proclaimed the gospel to these spirits on the Hades side of things, but also those in paradise, some of them were resurrected.
SPEAKER_02: Then he's resurrected, and so he's going back, he's taking us back to the worst time, church.
SPEAKER_02: It must have been the worst of times.
SPEAKER_02: Way worse than anything we're going through today during the time of Noah, so bad that God had to wipe out the earth except for eight souls.
SPEAKER_02: And I think his point is this that if Christ rose from the grave in those worst of times and that he can preach the gospel in the worst place.
SPEAKER_02: How much more does he understand your suffering?
SPEAKER_02: How much more does he love you and he's with you and he's gonna be there for you?
SPEAKER_02: Because he's gonna go some places next in this verse that is just astounding.
SPEAKER_02: Circle verse 22.
SPEAKER_02: Underline verse 22, highlight verse 22, because this is where this is going.
SPEAKER_02: Who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him.
SPEAKER_02: That's why I believe what I just said.
SPEAKER_02: That in other words, he was proclaiming to those spirits, the worst of spirits, high-level demons, man, that had come and infiltrated the whole earth.
SPEAKER_02: It had to be a flood to wipe them out.
SPEAKER_02: There were so many of them, and they were so evil, evil continually, that if Christ can go down into the worst place with the worst demons and the worst powers and the worst authorities, and tell them, I've risen from the grave, how much more is Christ there for you over every principality and power that's harassing you?
SPEAKER_02: And they do harass us.
SPEAKER_02: He's a king of kings.
SPEAKER_02: He's the Lord of Lords.
SPEAKER_02: He's a king over every president.
SPEAKER_02: He's a king over every prime minister.
SPEAKER_02: He is king.
SPEAKER_02: He's not up for re-election.
SPEAKER_02: He's a king.
SPEAKER_02: He has a kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: You're a citizen of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: And by being a citizen of the kingdom, you reverence and you worship and you follow him, and he stays on that throne until all of his enemies are subject to him.
SPEAKER_02: And guess what?
SPEAKER_02: They are becoming subject to him.
SPEAKER_02: Islam will be subject to him.
SPEAKER_02: Buddhism will be subject to him.
SPEAKER_02: Atheists will be subject to him.
SPEAKER_02: The church will be subject to him.
SPEAKER_02: With all the crazy stuff happening in the pastorate right now, and all the weird stuff happening in church right now, you know why that's happening?
SPEAKER_02: And we're going to talk about that in two weeks, is that the work of God, the repentance of God, starts in the church.
SPEAKER_02: God is cleansing his house.
SPEAKER_02: He is cleansing his church.
SPEAKER_02: That a beautiful bride would grow forth and come forth that will take over the earth.
SPEAKER_02: That even the like as the waters cover the sea, so will the glory of God flow all over the earth.
SPEAKER_02: And you get to be a part of it.
SPEAKER_02: That's good news, man.
SPEAKER_02: You can clap on that one.
SPEAKER_02: So now he says, he's built all this up to now say, therefore.
SPEAKER_02: And the reason he says therefore is because it's therefore something.
SPEAKER_02: It's therefore.
SPEAKER_02: Since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mentality, the same mind.
SPEAKER_02: For he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.
SPEAKER_02: Radical statement, man.
SPEAKER_02: Radical statement.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying that, like the idea here in the Greek, this is the only time this is ever used in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_02: Arm yourselves this way.
SPEAKER_02: This verse, the way this is used, not used anywhere else.
SPEAKER_02: He's like, put on the armor.
SPEAKER_02: This is what I'm doing today.
SPEAKER_02: I'm helping you do that.
SPEAKER_02: Put on the armor and think.
SPEAKER_02: Realize suffering is coming your way, but arm yourselves for battle.
SPEAKER_02: Get ready.
SPEAKER_02: It's coming.
SPEAKER_02: And are you just going to succumb to it like everybody else does and get angry and quit the church and quit Jesus and all that because everything didn't go perfectly for you?
SPEAKER_02: Or are you going to be one of those men and women that armed yourself mentally, emotionally, and spiritually?
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to invite Christ and the power of his resurrection and the power of his suffering into my pain.
SPEAKER_02: I don't get it.
SPEAKER_02: I don't understand it.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't seem fair.
SPEAKER_02: By the way, that's okay.
SPEAKER_02: Please do that.
SPEAKER_02: It's unhealthy not to do that.
SPEAKER_02: But then you've got a river, you've got a Rubicon, you have to cross over at some point where you say, I don't understand everything, I don't have all the answers, but Christ come.
SPEAKER_01: Be my friend.
SPEAKER_01: Love me as I love you.
SPEAKER_02: And you start hanging out with people who have empathy, people who've also gone through suffering.
SPEAKER_02: And you avoid like the plague the people who say, everything's gonna be fine.
SPEAKER_02: All things work together for for good.
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's true.
SPEAKER_02: Timing sucks.
SPEAKER_02: And you and you should say that.
SPEAKER_02: But if you don't feel it, what I'm saying is that's okay, because you will.
SPEAKER_02: You will.
SPEAKER_02: It takes time.
SPEAKER_02: It's amazing the human spirit, the God image spirit that's able to heal itself, even with the power of God working in coordination with how God's made our minds and spirits.
SPEAKER_02: God does bring healing.
SPEAKER_02: Victor Frankel, one of the great writers on suffering, who went through the concentration camps, said, quote, if there's a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.
SPEAKER_02: Suffering is an irredactable part of life.
SPEAKER_02: Even as faith and death.
SPEAKER_02: Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.
SPEAKER_02: He continues, we must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation.
SPEAKER_02: For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement.
SPEAKER_02: So Frankel here is not blithely saying everything happens for a reason.
SPEAKER_02: I believe that to be true, but I'm saying blithely saying that, or that we should deny our anger or the rage that we may feel, but rather that God has something meaningful in our suffering.
SPEAKER_02: That we can learn and we can grow, and even as James said, we're perfected through suffering.
SPEAKER_02: So prepare your mind for suffering.
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting that all the studies on suffering, there's so many, but reading and researching suffering is that we find this to be true that the men and women who've been through the deepest suffering that processed it, that it had a meaning and a purpose for their lives, are those that are the most mature.
SPEAKER_02: They have depth to their lives.
SPEAKER_02: And so suffering is a work of God, a deep work of God in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: Hebrews, we read, for since he himself was tempted in that which he has suffered, he is able to come to the aid of those who are so tempted.
SPEAKER_02: So Christ identifies with your pain.
SPEAKER_02: Philippians, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, church, what Paul had discovered is that he could not really fully understand the power of the resurrection without going through the fellowship of his suffering.
SPEAKER_02: So, in other words, there's a cross and then there's a resurrection.
SPEAKER_02: And the resurrection, here's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_02: The resurrection has meaning because you had a cross.
SPEAKER_02: That's why when we're preaching the gospel, we're sharing our faith with someone, if they don't understand that they are sinful and separated from God, and we just jump right over to the resurrection, we jump right over to the abundant life, we're somehow producing an incomplete salvation.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, to understand what Christ did at the cross, and then to allow ourselves to go to that cross.
SPEAKER_02: I have been crucified with Christ.
SPEAKER_02: It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life that I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who was delivered up for me.
SPEAKER_02: That's right here on my pulpit.
SPEAKER_02: It's my life verse.
SPEAKER_02: So we're crucified with Christ, that by which we understand now the power of his resurrection in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: And so suffering in Christ has a cleansing effect.
SPEAKER_02: Suffering in Christ, redemptive suffering, redeems us not for salvation, but for our own sanctification.
SPEAKER_02: And when your flesh suffers and you receive it in Christ, somehow, men and women, it does have a cleansing effect within us.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 2, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lust of men, but for the will of God.
SPEAKER_02: For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lewdness, lustness, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.
SPEAKER_02: In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you.
SPEAKER_02: They will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
SPEAKER_02: For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead.
SPEAKER_02: He's going back to the previous verse.
SPEAKER_02: That they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but to live according to God in the spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Men and women, don't waste your life.
SPEAKER_02: The power of Christ's suffering becomes our power in suffering.
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna suffer.
SPEAKER_02: And if it's the revelries of drinking parties, learn to hug the toilet.
SPEAKER_02: If it's having sex with everybody that you're attracted to, live with the deep sense of guilt that you wake up with in the morning wondering, what did I just do?
SPEAKER_02: If you're embezzling money and you're not sure if you got caught, if people know it, was there a camera when you did that?
SPEAKER_02: So you live with this feeling like, I wonder if I'm gonna get it caught on this.
SPEAKER_02: You're suffering.
SPEAKER_02: So there's spirit-filled suffering and there's stupid suffering.
SPEAKER_02: That's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be a judgment day.
SPEAKER_02: So why not suffer in Christ?
SPEAKER_02: Because you're gonna suffer.
SPEAKER_02: Because if you do, it's redemptive, it redeems us, it makes us better people.
SPEAKER_02: The best people on the face of the earth have suffered greatly if they've processed it in Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Those are my favorite people.
SPEAKER_02: Those are bloodstained allies.
SPEAKER_02: Because when I share something with them, they totally get it.
SPEAKER_02: Because they've been there, they know that kind of pain.
SPEAKER_02: Those are the kind of friends that you need to have.
SPEAKER_02: That's why the church is here, is because we need those people in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: So we look around us and we see that everyone suffers in this life.
SPEAKER_02: Even the Jesus follower suffers.
SPEAKER_02: But the difference is the actualization of our suffering by identifying with the sufferings of Christ, knowing that Christ is with us in the valley of the shadow of death.
SPEAKER_02: So we grow in our faith.
SPEAKER_02: The power of Christ's suffering becomes our power in suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.