I was having lunch with a guy who was telling me about a struggle he'd been having for a while. He said he knew he was a sinner, and that he was fallen and that he would keep committing this one sin,and he knew he was going to keeo committing this one sin because he was a sinner and his nature was evil and there was nothing he could do about it because of what a sinner he was...
Do I have to go on?
I was so depressed I wanted to bang my head on the table. His question was basically why do I stuggle like this?
And all that was running through my head during his questions, was that his system was perfectly designed to achieve the results he was getting.
He's convinced he is a sinner, he's convinced he is going to sin, he has no hope against sin, he believes his basic nature is sin and then he wonders why he keeps sinning.
And what was so startling to me is that he said he had just become a Christian. It seemed to me that becoming a christian had given him all sorts of new things to feel guilty about. I wondered if becoming a Christian had made his life not better but actually worse.
Paul knew people like this too; people who found their Christianity to be a weight that they didn’t have before. They found the so called rules constricting not freeing, and they found themselves giving up the fight and resigning to the fact that God’s grace is never ending but easily abused.
Romans 6:1-4
Well then, should we keep sinning so that God can show us more and more forgiveness? Of Course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we became Christians and were baptized to become one with Jesus Christ, we died with him? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.
You know, I have been guilty of abusing God’s grace. But as I come to realise who I am in Christ, I know that I am holy through his death and resurrection.
[Paul insists]in another letter that if we are having this new kind of transforming experiencs with Christ in which we are taking on a new identity, we are literally now a "new Creation."
I am being remade.
I am not who I was.
I am a new Creation.
I am "in Christ."
When God looks at me, God sees Christ, because I'm "in" Him.
God's view of me is Christ.
And Christ is perfect.
This is why Paul goes on to say "Therefore as God's Chosen people, holy, and dearly loved..."
Did you catch that word in the middle?
HOLY
In these passages, we're being told who we are, now.
Praise God.
