New Creation

New creation?

I am always so amazed at how I feel when I think back to my BS days- that is my “before salvation” days. I feel loved, blessed, joyful, relieved, freed…I feel like a new creation. That is, of course, because I am. The Bible teaches us that at the point of salvation and justification we become a new creation. We are moved from being under sin and Satan, to being in Christ! We are brought from a state of alienation and being at enmity with God to being a child of the Father and a brother/sister to and in Christ Jesus. I am so thankful to know that the Bible also teaches that nothing can change our new identity.

The reason for this posting…is I am discouraged sometimes by fellow believers and how they view these truths. There seems to be three camps of thought;

1) I am made new, but you are not

2) You are made new, but I am not

3) I am made new and so are you

I am made new, but you are not.

Adulterers, pedophiles, homosexuals, murderers, thieves, addicts… Are their sins greater? Once a _____ always a _____. It is so disheartening to see this kind of attitude in our churches. The danger of this kind of thinking is two-fold. One, this kind of thinking reduces the weight or gravity of sin. By judging another’s sin as more sinful than your own sin, goes to show that you do not have a correct view on just how nauseating your own sin is to the Holy God. Two, it pushes people that need and can be saved by the precious blood of Christ out the door either to a false church or hardened to God’s FREE, MERCIFUL, GRACIOUS gift of salvation. Can one hold to this view and hold to a correct view of sin? I think not. Further can one hold to this view and hold to a correct view of redemption and atonement? I think not.

You are made new, but I am not.

This is the same view as above, but instead of being born out of someone else’s pride; it is born out of one’s own pride. On the surface, it may not seem a prideful view to hold, but I submit that anytime and in any way that we think, we or our sins are bigger and more powerful than God that, that is indeed pride. God is greater than any sin. Holding this view diminishes the power of the atonement; the propitiation of sins on the cross where Jesus died and the conquering of sin and death from the grave where Jesus rose!

I am made new and so are you!

2 Corinthians 5:11-21

11Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. 12We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. 13If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.