Positional Truth Versus Practical Condition

That's positional truth, what is true of you in Christ. And it's interesting, whenever Paul deals with a problem in the scriptures, it seems like he points to positional truth as the solution. And even when he's disciplined people in Corinth, he is pointing them to positional truth. In Corinth, the mess was really bad. They had fornicators, they had people going to the temple, joining themselves to prostitutes. They were out of control. And yet, he did not tell them that they weren't saved, nor did he tell them to fear losing their salvation. Instead, he points them to positional truth. He says, what, are you gonna make your body, which is the member of Christ, the member of a prostitute? Don't you realize your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and that if you join your members, your members are members of Christ, and if they join to a prostitute, they become one flesh. It's like you're marrying Christ to a prostitute. All of that is positional truth. Positional truth is you're a temple of the Holy Spirit, Christ dwells in you, you are a member of Christ. And these are spiritual realities that are true if you're a believer, whether you wanna admit it or not. So he tries to get their conscience and their mind around spiritual things, to have a spiritual understanding. He knows the solution to the problem of sin, ultimately, is seeing the truth of who they are in Christ. Now, there's corrections, don't get me wrong. I mean, he definitely shows us that you can be disciplined severely to the point where we deliver that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that their soul might be saved in the day of Jesus Christ. He can get bad. However, he never implies that you're gonna not be saved or lose your salvation. If he knows, if Paul knows that you are born a God because you have the profession of faith, then he always works to point you to positional truth. Even when he tells the people, look, if you destroy God's building, God will destroy you. He says, you are God's building, you are God's farm. And we have to take heed how we build. There's a foundation that's been laid, which is Christ. Everybody take heed how they build on that foundation. That's all positional truth. That's all things that are true in Christ that are settled facts, okay? And we're to consider these facts and be cautious of them and handle them correctly, but also celebrate them, you know? Celebrate positional truth by preaching the gospel to yourself because that's the answer to bring you out of the flesh and into the spirit and to make the spiritual realm really tangible to your mind and to your conscience and to your heart so that it's real to you. It's not just a vague concept, but you have a full assurance of faith because you've got a mind full of details about, see, he's describing a divine and mystical realm that you actually live in in your spirit. All these positional truths are things that are true in Christ, and he is the good land. He is a realm that you have yet to explore. And so he gives you the map of the terrain by giving you positional truth in the hopes that it'll capture your vision and your heart, right? And in Romans 6, we've already seen a whole bunch of positional truth. Verse two, you're dead to sin. Verse three, you're baptized into Jesus Christ and into his death. Verse four, you're buried with him and baptized him into his death. And now even as Christ is raised from the dead, we can walk in newness of life. That's available to you as a positional truth. You've been baptized into Christ's death. And so that's why you can walk in newness of life. Newness of life is not a positional truth, but the availability of it is. Planted together in the likeness of his death in verse five, you will be in the likeness of his resurrection. Verse six, the old man was crucified with Christ and the body of sin is destroyed. You're no longer servants of sin. Verse seven, freed from sin because we're dead. Verse eight, we're dead with Christ and we believe we will live with him. And then verse nine through 11, Christ died to sin and has been raised from the dead and he's alive to God and we're alive to God through Christ. Therefore, sin shall not have dominion over you. Those are all facts that we should be considering just as much as we consider that we've been risen with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly places and our sins have been forgiven. And all of these things are positional things that the map of the terrain, a real place in God where all these facts are true.

This is, first of all, we teach that there's a difference between position and condition. Even Jesus had a difference between his position and his condition. Why? Because he's on the earth, conditionally, but he's in the Father, positionally. He's from heaven. He's in heaven, positionally, and yet he's on the earth. We are the same. We're seated with Christ in the heavens. That's true. Positional doesn't mean not real. Positional is what is actually true in the Spirit. When pastors talk about positional versus conditional, they, unfortunately, make positional to be something that's not real. It becomes so abstract that it's not even worth referencing other than as a good point to keep in mind to encourage you occasionally. And then there's your condition, which is you walk on the earth. Now, with or without sin, that's true. I'm on the earth, and yet I'm in the heavens. My life is hid with Christ in God. And so, we say there's a difference between positional and conditional. I did a video a few weeks back, because another pastor, who I don't think believes the same way this guy does, he just talked through the book of Galatians and made it sound like the book of James, to spite us. And no, it's not a pastor you guys know. There's a lot of little pastors around who are taking up the call to arms. But anyway, he argued the same thing. It's like they don't understand that there's a difference between their practical, conditional walk and what's true positionally of a believer. And I did a video, somebody send me the link and put it in the comments, I'll try to find it, called Our Response to Positional Truth is to Believe It. And even, he mentioned Miles Stanford here, but Miles Stanford, that's what he taught in his Principles of Position. The way we walk is to believe what is true of us. And it is called positional because God positioned us in Christ, but that doesn't make it unreal. And positional versus conditional are seminary terms, they're not biblical terms. So we have to keep that in mind. These are human doctrines, not revelation from the Spirit.

and the way the Christian life is lived is revealed in Paul's writings and we call it positional truth. Positional truth means, I guess it's rooted in Romans 5 through 8, but 5 especially talks about how we used to be an atom and we were born into sin. We were born dead in our trespasses and sins, heirs of God's wrath by nature, under the prince of the power of the air and the kingdom of darkness. You know, we were at enmity with God and our destiny was hell, death and hell, and sin reigned over us because we were in Adam and we were at odds with God. Well, the way God solved that problem was not to correct us or to teach us, but to, through the death and resurrection of Christ, make a transfer. We are transferred out of Adam and into Christ. So, that's a change of position and that's why it's called positional truth. We were positionally in Adam and his disobedience was credited to us all. Through one man's disobedience, sin entered into the world and death reigned by sin, even over those who had not sinned in the same way he had. We all were born because we were in Adam. We were born in sin and we had all the consequences. Well, we were positionally in Adam and then, through the death and resurrection of Christ, God wants to affect a change of position so that we are transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of the beloved son by being identified with Christ in his death and resurrection. And that's what baptism is all about. We were buried with him in baptism into his death. His death was a termination of the Adamic human race.

And they say that there's a strong distinction between what they call positional and practical truth. And there is positional truth. Our duty, our obedience is to believe it. The gospel is positional truth. But a fancy way of cloaking unbelief and making it look like good religious practice is to say, well, there's positional truth and then there's our practical life and there's instructions for both and blessings for both. And, uh, and when we talk about believing the gospel, uh, and actually seeing the manifestation of Christ in our life, they don't believe that. So they say, well, they just take positional truth and apply it to their life as if, uh, to their practical life. They don't see that there's a difference between positional and practical truth. Now we see that there's a difference between our condition and our position, but that's not the same thing as, uh, a difference between position and practice, our practices, according to positional truth and our practices to believe it, so I just want to examine this comment and respond to it in this video is the way the Christian life is lived now. Um, but he says here that we don't rightly divide between position and condition. He says, we look at verses that deal with positional truths and then automatically apply them to the Christian's practical life. Okay. Um, that's how we live actually is by faith in positional truth. It's called the principle of position. The way we live is by acknowledging what is true of us positionally. And it's not just true positionally and yet not practically, it becomes true practically as we acknowledge it by faith. We're to live by faith, not by what we see with our eyes, but what God has said in his word, and that is called the obedience of faith, and that's how Abraham was to live.

that our condition varies as believers. We're talking about already saved believers. And you guys are acting like we're talking about how to get saved. And in some cases, I would say that the critique is somewhat justified because of how absolute the language gets. You know, I'm already forgiven. I'm already redeemed. And if you teach that I had to confess sins to be in fellowship with God, you're saying I'm not saved. And that's not what they're saying. Well, I'll give them that. That is not what they're saying. Okay. But that is why this guy I'm talking to has said, how can you elevate this to the level of the gospel? Because we're talking about in-house stuff. You know, is there a variance between condition and position? And how is that dealt with? And for an unbeliever, it can't be dealt with at all. Their position and their condition is that they're an air of wrath by nature and they're going to hell. So it's the same. The ones that have a variance between their condition and the position are the ones who are seated in the heavenly places and yet are in tabernacles of flesh on the earth. And how is that difference made up for? Now, what I'll say is that in their view of these things, they are totally sin conscious. And one of the points I was making was that, look, the variance, the difference, the gulf between our condition and our position is literally as high as the heavens are above the earth. And confessing your sin does not make up that difference. Even if you weren't sinning, it doesn't make up that difference. Even if you were spotless, it wouldn't make up that difference because being seated with Christ in the heavens and being the air of all things and reigning with him requires, for manifestation, requires transfiguration and a new heavens and a new earth where we actually see everything, or the kingdom at least, where we see everything subject to him. But until that happens, we are to walk by faith and not by sight. And the difference between the condition and the position is not that the position isn't true. It's that I can't see it. I can't see all these things that are true, but by faith, I see Jesus. That's what Hebrew says. You know, the great salvation we've received subjects the world to come to us, but we don't