If you don't know who you are, if you don't have a bigger narrative than your own decisions,

then it is inevitable that you live a destabilized life. And we're now living in a time in the

Western world when our younger people are all at sea where governments are spending vast

amounts of money trying to help young people to decide who they are. And the background to that is

because we've actually rejected who the scriptures say we are.

We're living in a time when many people, especially the up and coming generation,

have lost the sense of personal identity. We just don't know who we are, so we cling to labels,

to identities, and what we really need to do is look to the Bible. I'm Nathan W. Bingham and I'm

glad you're joining us for the Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

Sinclair Ferguson has been helping us see what the Bible teaches on our union with Christ,

and this is an immensely practical topic because it deals with our identities,

and even who we are if we're not a Christian. So listen today is Dr. Ferguson unfolds what he calls

the grand narrative of human history, the story of two men, two actions, and two results.

While now in our previous sessions we've begun to explore this great theme of union with Christ,

and we've been a little like the folks in Joshua's time marching around Jericho until

the penny drops that this is such a significant truth that's taught in scripture.

So what we've been doing is we've been looking at some passages that give us different angles

on this central idea of union with Christ, and we're coming now to think about Adam and Christ,

union with Adam and union with Christ, and of course the great passage that gives us a foundation

for our thinking is in Romans chapter 5 and verses 12 through 21. This is by any measure,

an exceedingly complex passage, and for that reason I want to read it so that we can feel

something of the complexity and depth in it, and then what I want to do is to try to unfold it

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