Ankerberg Show

John Ankerberg: Welcome to the John Ankerberg Show Classics Edition. For decades, we've been privileged to host esteemed scholars discussing a wide range of topics from apologetics and science to biblical prophecy and beyond. Join us as we revisit these timeless conversations and make them accessible to you wherever you are.

Narrator: Today on the John Ankerberg Show, have you ever said, "I give up! I can't live the Christian life"?

Dr. Wayne Barber: I wake up some mornings, John, and I'll be honest with you: I don't even feel like a Christian. I could care less about wanting to be one. That's just the way I wake up. You heard about the old boy who said, "Lord, I haven't coveted, I haven't had a lustful thought, I haven't lied, I haven't cheated, but I'm about to get out of bed."

I don't have the ability to do what God's told me to do. I can't live the Christian life. Therefore, someone lives in me to strengthen me, to enable me, to give me the ability to do what He expects out of me. Yes, I have a brand new nature, the partaking of the nature of Christ, but I still have my flesh to deal with. That is a battle royale that begins the moment we receive Christ into our hearts.

He lives within us to enable everything He demands from us. That's the good news. That's the beauty of the gospel. It didn't just stop at salvation; it started. Christ comes to live in us. He is our eternal life. He is our life, and that's what people need to understand. The same way you received Him is the same way you walk in Him. Just trust Him.

John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. I'm so glad you joined us today. I'm John Ankerberg, and we have a terrific guest. His name is Dr. Wayne Barber. He is the best, I believe, at helping Christians who have grown up in church all of their lives. They've listened to sermons about living the Christian life, and they have tried and tried, and they have failed miserably. They're discouraged; they're frustrated. Maybe I'm talking about you.

Some have even decided, "It can't work for me. That's not for me. I'm gone." Okay, I'm so glad that you tuned in today because that's what we're going to talk about. Wayne, let's start it this way. You said that you yourself were frustrated for many years in trying to live the Christian life. You said it was even like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together that was missing a piece. Start us off today.

Dr. Wayne Barber: When you put a jigsaw puzzle together, if you don't have every piece, the picture is not clear. That is exactly the story of my Christian life. When I was growing up, we used to do that at holidays, to have a thousand or so piece puzzle. I'd hide a piece. That was so frustrating when you get right down to the last part and that piece is missing.

The piece that was missing for me was I thought that now that I'm saved, it was up to me from that point on. I blew it big time trying to meet everybody's needs, trying to do everything that's right, and realized I couldn't do any of it. That's the piece I was missing: the Christian's responsibility is learning to respond to His ability because He now lives in us.

John Ankerberg: I want you to relate to the folks that this can really be frustrating. You've got this great, humorous story about your daughter Stephanie. You and your son and daughter used to take them to school in the morning. Tell what happened one morning.

Dr. Wayne Barber: One morning, Stephanie was habitually late. She always had to get her hair right for whatever reason. She would brush it and brush it and brush it. I'd go up and I'd say, "Stephanie, it's time to go," and in about ten minutes, "I hear you, Daddy." Stephen was my more sensitive child; Stephanie was more nose-to-nose, toe-to-toe.

My son and I were set out in the car. We got to know each other real well waiting on my daughter. One morning, she came out of the back and across the back deck, and she slipped on the ice. She was going to a Christian school, so they wore dresses and hose, and it tore her hose and messed up her knee. It was too late to go back and change. She got in the car and slammed the door.

I told my son before she got in the car, I said, "Stephen, it's going to be good today." She gets in the car, and she always had something to say. She said, "Daddy, I want to tell you something." I said, "Okay, Stephanie, what is it?" She said, "You cannot live the Christian life. I don't care what you preach, Daddy, but you cannot live the Christian life." I said, "Thanks for the encouragement. I'll try to encourage somebody today."

On the way to school, it began to dawn on me she's exactly right. Before she got out of the car, I said, "Stephanie, thank you for reminding me that I can't live the Christian life. Christ comes to live in me to do through me what I could never do."

John Ankerberg: There are a lot of other believers that are just like Stephanie, who say, "Wayne, I have heard all the messages about what I'm supposed to do. I have tried and I can't do it. I failed miserably." What is that piece that I'm missing?

Dr. Wayne Barber: That piece is Christ in us. Let me introduce you to Bubba. I call him Bubba. We'll make him famous. Bubba, before the Cross, is pretty limp. There's not a thing he can do to earn his way into salvation. A person saved by faith, by grace, is not by any work that a man does. Bubba can do nothing to measure to the standard that God has.

Once he gets saved, guess what happens? Christ comes to live within him. Now Bubba can do all kinds of things—not because of Bubba, but because of the life that is within him. However, when Bubba chooses to overlook that and do it himself, he becomes the same Bubba. On either side of the Cross, the flesh always fails to measure to the law. The law is God's demand of His character in our life, and none of us can do that. That's why Christ comes to live in us.

John Ankerberg: Give me some verses that describe what you're talking about.

Dr. Wayne Barber: I think Romans 6 is about as clear as any passage. He starts off and says, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin?" An interesting thing here is he puts the definite article before sin. Let me explain that. If I had a bunch of cups here in front of me and I said, "Pick up a cup," but I did not put the definite article in, you could pick any cup you wanted. But if I put the definite article in, there's a specific cup that I want to be picked up.

He puts the definite article before the word sin all the way down to verse 14. Then he changes it and drops it, and then he picks it back up again. So what is he talking about? He says that we continue in "the sin." It's not a particular sin. He's talking about the attitude of sin, which John says in 1 John is lawlessness. All sin is lawlessness.

When I want to do my own thing and I'm not going to listen to anybody, I'm going to live this Christian life in my own strength, that's where we fail. He says, "Are we to continue in doing it our own way so that grace might increase?" Then he says, "May it never be!" I love that phrase; it's used several times in Romans. It's like my son saying, "Daddy, can I borrow your golf clubs?" "May it never be! You borrowed my last set and I didn't get them back."

"How shall we who died to sin still live in it?" There he goes: died to that way of living on our own, doing what we want to do. "Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?" Then in verse 4, picking up "therefore"—I love the "therefores" in Scripture because what are they there for? He says, "Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life."

Now that newness of life, there are two words for "new." There's the word *neos*—Wayne bought another car, but it was new to him, but it was a car. *Kainos* is the word that means qualitatively, totally never seen before. Wayne went out and bought a spaceship. That makes it quite different; it's a newness of life. That's why in Romans 12 he says, "Present your bodies a living sacrifice, which is your spiritual service of worship." So there's a brand new way of living, but the key is that Christ is that life that comes to live within us. I think Galatians also picks up on that.

John Ankerberg: Two questions about what you just said. One is: people want to know, "What does it mean that I died in Christ? When did that happen? How did it happen?" And what about baptism? Are you talking about being immersed in water? What are you talking about?

Dr. Wayne Barber: First of all, the dying takes place at the moment you receive Christ. You're no longer the same. You have died to an old way of living. You have entered into a brand new way of life—even if we didn't know it. The key is we've got to renew our minds to understand that from God's Word. As we learn to understand that truth, then it makes sense why Christ came to live in us.

God says to us, once we've accepted Christ, something happened to you. You are a brand new creature. It's not a car in the driveway; it's a spaceship. You've got a completely new thing. But people say, "Wayne, if God has made me a completely different person in Christ, how come I don't feel it?" I think that's probably because we don't understand the deceitfulness of our flesh.

We drag the mentality of the world right into our Christian life. I played ball in college. I remember the signs on the wall in the locker room: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." "Barber, run another lap." "I can't." "Then run ten more." Suck it up. You can do it, boy. We drag that attitude that we can somehow accomplish something that God expects right into our Christian life. That's where your downfall is. If it's about my works, then I'm responding to my ability and not to His ability.

Regarding baptism, we're talking about that as an illustration of what happened. If I had a bowl of dye, red dye, and it was a clear bowl, and I took a white cloth and I put it down into that red dye, I have baptized it. A lot of my friends say, "No, it means identification." Well, yes, but the secular Greek, when a person drowned, would use this word. So it probably meant that too.

As you put it down to immerse it into that red dye, something happens to that cloth. It's no longer a white cloth. Not only is it in the dye, but the dye is in the cloth. That's that picture of what happens to us at salvation. We are buried in the likeness of Christ, raised to walk in newness of life. As He died on that Cross, we died with Him. That becomes appropriated the moment that we bow and receive Him into our hearts. We become a brand new person.

John Ankerberg: We're going to take a break. This is good stuff. It is what God's Word says, and yet people have such a hard time understanding it and actually believing it, grasping it. So when we come back, I'm going to ask you the question: if this is all true, why do I have such a hard time? What is this thing that the Bible calls my flesh? I want you to define that and get the verses out. I want you to show them from God's Word that this is what God says, and this is the key to everything here.

We're talking about this problem. If you're a Christian and you've accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, and He's come into your life, but you're having frustration at trying to live the Christian life, we're talking about what God says happened to you, why you've got that frustration, why there's a struggle, and what is the victory that God has promised. How do we get there? Wayne, pick it up again. Why is it so hard for us to live the Christian life?

Dr. Wayne Barber: Let's pick up at verse 5 in Romans chapter 6. Verse 5 says, "For if we have been united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection." I love that. The word "united" is a compound word. A lot of prepositions are used in the Greek language which help define the word. The word "with," they have more than one word for. We have one word for "with," but they have two: the word *sun* (or *soon* as some people say) and the word *meta*.

*Meta* is the "with" of association. *Sun* is the "with" of intimacy to where you cannot separate. It's very important that we understand the difference there. It's kind of like... I love biscuits. I just love biscuits. I can't help it. We lived out west for several years, nine years in Albuquerque. They have tortillas. They're good, they really are good, but there's nothing like a good old cathead Southern biscuit.

Let's just say we're making some biscuits right now and we've got a bowl. We put all the ingredients in that bowl. Which word would we have to use? It would have to be *meta* because you can add to it, and if you really knew what you were doing, you could take away. But you mix it all together and you put it in the shape of a large biscuit. You put it in the oven and you bake it. You pull it out. Are those ingredients together? Oh, yes. But if you were a Greek, you'd have to change that preposition. No longer are they just with each other; they're a part of each other. They have been baked into each other.

So, to me, what Paul is saying is that we're biscuits for Jesus. Jesus has baked Himself into our lives. But here comes the struggle in verse 6: "knowing this"—and that means know by experience; we're going to find out real quick—"that our old self was crucified with Him in order that our body of sin might be done away with."

"Body of sin" is an interesting way he calls our body. "Done away with"—that's an interesting translation. Some say "destroyed." Well, yes and no. The word is *katargéō*. *Kata*, down; *argéō*, to idle, to put into neutral. When I was growing up, we had one of the two ugliest cars ever made, I think. Not an Edsel, that was pretty bad, but this was a Studebaker. Remember the Studebakers? They looked like a bullet. If you got certain types, it was like: where's the front, where's the back?

My daddy didn't have the opportunity to choose because we didn't have a lot of money, so he had to buy what was available. We bought a yellow one. I was thinking as a young person, "Dad, don't buy a yellow Studebaker." We didn't have a driveway or garage, so he'd park it up in the yard. No, Dad, park it two blocks away. We'll walk to it. We don't want anybody to know we have it.

But one day I got in it and I said, "I'm going to learn to drive this thing." Back then, there was no automatic shift. You had to learn to drive straight shift or ride a bicycle. So I got in it and I started the thing up. Most of us have had that experience of forgetting to put it in neutral and leaving it in gear and not pushing the clutch in. You try to start it and it jerks a knot in your neck.

So I finally learned to push the clutch in, and I finally learned to coordinate with the gas pedal and move it forward twenty feet. I wouldn't go any further because we had a wall in the back of our yard, and if I went over that, I was dead. So I would go twenty feet forward and twenty feet backward. Forward, back. Matter of fact, when I got my driver's license at 17 years old, I think I'd driven 20,000 miles, twenty feet forward and twenty feet back.

The thing that hit me was: if I put it in neutral or pushed the clutch in, I could step down on that gas pedal and it would roar with the best of them. The power would make a noise. However, it had no effect on the car because it had been disengaged by the clutch. When Christ came to our life, He disengaged, in that sense, rendered sin powerless when He came into our life.

The river got a hold of me and I couldn't get out of it. The current was so strong. You flipped the canoe right over. Flipped the canoe and, by the grace of God, made it through that. But I realized that current was carrying me. I could not do a thing against that current. It was so strong. I shouldn't have been on the river to start with; it was at flood stage, which wasn't a real smart idea.

But I finally found a branch somewhere that I could grab hold of, and it swung me around onto the bank. That's exactly the way it is. When we think we can do it, we get sucked into the current of the flesh, and the flesh pulls us right under and frustrates us to no end. For instance, I have people say, "Well, I don't believe that, Wayne. I believe you can do it." Really? God commands us to love our wives as Christ loved the Church. Any takers? I'm not raising my hand.

Only He lives within us to enable everything He demands from us. That's the good news. That's the beauty of the gospel. It didn't just stop at salvation; it started. Christ comes to live in us. He is our eternal life. He is our life, and that's what people need to understand. The same way you received Him is the same way you walk in Him. Just trust Him. But don't trust the flesh because it'll suck you under, and there's a real devastation in front of you.

John Ankerberg: What's the next part of the verse?

Dr. Wayne Barber: He says "be done away with sin, so that we should no longer be slaves to sin." That's the whole problem. We're in slavery not by choice as much as by default. When we choose not to say yes to Christ, we're automatically slaves to sin at that point. Self comes in. The middle letter of the word "sin" to me identifies it: it's "I." The middle letter of the word "pride": "I." When I get into the picture, I'm going to mess it up royally.

John Ankerberg: Wayne, talk more about this thing: that when we were saved, Christ put us in neutral. Otherwise, we were in drive, going with our passions and our lusts and our desires. We had no power over that, but He's put us in neutral, so now He's given us a choice. He's taken us out of the river. The river is still roaring. We step back in, boy, boom, we're gone again. Talk a little bit more about that.

Dr. Wayne Barber: I think Paul helps us to understand that when he says in Galatians 5:16, "But I say, walk by the Spirit." Now, that's a choice. That's a choice we have to make. "By" means "according to." Whatever the Spirit... the Spirit works according to the Word. So as we're willing to submit to Christ, submit to His Word, we walk by the Spirit. He says, "and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh."

So we still have the desire of the flesh. He's speaking to believers, not speaking to lost people. Then he says, "For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, for those are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please." That really is in the present tense: keep on doing the things that you please. In other words, it's a dead-end street. When I choose Wayne over Christ in my life, anything He demands me to do, He lives within me to enable me. The problem is I think so many of us don't realize how deceiving the desires of the flesh are.

John Ankerberg: We're going to talk about that more next week. But I want us to start even at the basic thing. There are some Christians that say, "I've sinned so much, I don't think this is even possible." But they really did believe in Christ, and they feel guilty and frustrated because they're not living this way. You really encourage them by saying, "Look, start by just asking God to give you more of a desire. Ask God to open up the Word on that specific topic, and then pray that He would start to change you." Because your whole message is: we can't change ourselves. This is something that Christ has got to do. He's now in there, but we've got to ask Him. What else would you say?

Dr. Wayne Barber: That's said pretty well. If I'm not willing to understand what I can't do, look out, because that's where I'm going to mess up. So many things we think we can do. That's where God showed me very quickly, driving home after a church service, having just had a wonderful time in the Word. Somebody gets in front of me that I want to flat out run over. I mean, where did they learn to drive? Get their driver's license at Sears and Roebuck? I'm following them, and I just get livid. I'm thinking, "Wait a minute, where did that come from?" How deceitful the flesh is, to make us think it's about us when it's about Christ.

John Ankerberg: Next week, folks, you're not going to want to miss this topic. Our topic is going to be: our flesh is addicted to sin. Our flesh is addicted to sin, but Christ has provided the way of victory. He is our victory, but we don't know how to apply what the Bible is talking about. Wayne is going to go through this thing of what the Bible says about this topic. So let me ask you this: are you satisfied with your Christian life, or do you know there are certain things that shouldn't be there, and you've tried and tried and you've never gotten over them, you've never lived the way Christ wants you to do it, and you've just kind of given up? Next week, please don't miss the program. We're going to tell you what Christ says in the Word of God. Join us then.

Narrator: Stay tuned as we revisit these timeless discussions and join us in celebrating the wealth of knowledge that continues to encourage and educate. To learn more, please visit jashow.org. That's jashow.org. Or subscribe to us on YouTube. Thank you.