All Things New...Even Me

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, when I was a child and teenager, the emphasis in the church was to get people to church, get them down the aisle after the sermon, and get them to repeat something called “The Sinner’s Prayer”. This prayer was primarily about inviting Jesus into your heart or accepting Jesus as your Savior. None of this in any specific sense can be found in the Bible.

Now, I am not suggesting that nobody was saved under such misguided terms and prayers, but I am certain that there were many false professions of faith with these methods. I know far too many people that made such professions of faith from my youth group alone, who have no interest in God or Christianity today, and whose lives display absolutely no biblical evidence that they are born-again believers.

Eternal salvation is not in reciting the right kind of prayer or saying the proper words. We cannot simply “accept” Jesus as our Savior and thus become the sovereign ones that makes salvation happen, and I am not sure what “inviting” Jesus into your heart even means. God alone is sovereign in salvation as His gift to the elect, to those who truly believe and confess Jesus as Lord and Master of their life. Salvation is by God’s grace alone, through faith alone (a faith that He supplies), and in Christ alone, not by any works or deeds or merit that we bring to the table.

If there was a “sinner’s prayer” that had specific words to be recited, can you imagine the terror of making sure that they were recited properly, or worse yet, reciting them properly so that someone you witness to says it right or risk eternity in hell?

To be blunt, when salvation is genuine, it will be clearly evident in a person’s life. If you are not sure that a friend or loved one is saved, it is highly unlikely that they are saved. At the very moment of God, delivering you from Satan’s domain of darkness and lovingly placing you in His marvelous light, there is a radical and undeniable change. The speed in which one grows in Christ and the swiftness in which one progresses in sanctification, may be noticeably different from person to person, but there will be a change in the new believer’s life that is evident.

Steven Curtis Chapman had a popular song on the Christian charts around 20-years ago or so, called “The Change”. The lyrics are appropriate for the verse that we will focus on this morning.

Well I got myself a T-shirt that says what I believe I got letters on my bracelet to serve as my ID I got the necklace and the key chain And almost everything a good Christian needs I got the little Bible magnets on my refrigerator door And a welcome mat to bless you before you walk across my floor I got a Jesus bumper sticker And the outline of a fish stuck on my car And even though this stuff's all well and good I cannot help but ask myself What about the change What about the difference What about the grace What about forgiveness What about a life that's showing I'm undergoing the change, yeah I'm undergoing the change Well I've got this way of thinking that comes so naturally Where I believe the whole world is revolving around me And I got this way of living that I have to die to every single day 'Cause if God's Spirit lives inside of me I'm gonna live life differently I'm gonna have the change I'm gonna have the difference I'm gonna have the grace I'm gonna have forgiveness I'm gonna live a life that's showing I'm undergoing the change

Saying that you are a believer in Christ is utterly meaningless if your life has not changed and is not continuing to change. God will save us just as we are, but if we have indeed been saved as the Bible defines being saved, the Holy Spirit living within us will not leave us the way we are. Salvation is radical transformation from a spiritually dead soul to a spiritually alive soul, and thus there will be a life, without any doubt whatsoever, evidenced by change. You will be different in many ways from the inside.

Turn with me in your Bible to the Book of 2nd Corinthians. For context, I’ll read 5:17-21, but we will only consider verse 17 this morning.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21

Let’s pray.

We will unpack the reasons for this change, next week, but I trust that you noticed this changed life means that each one of us are now ambassadors of Jesus Christ with the ministry of reconciliation, that of reconciling other people to God. So, one of the proofs that you are saved is a desire to see others saved to the point of personal action, meaning being His witnesses and making disciples. But we will get to that next week.

2 Corinthians 5:17

When a person is saved, they are immediately transformed into a new creature or new creation. This person’s nature is brand new – the old things have passed away and new things have come. There will be vestiges of the old nature that must be suppressed and crucified, or mortified to use an older English word, on a daily basis as we grow in discipleship and sanctification, but there is a new transformed nature, a mind that is now set on Christ, and an internal desire to increasingly know God, to grow in understanding Scripture, and to follow your Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.

This is not always a smooth transition, which is why we are called to a ministry of making disciples. Even though, once saved, Satan no longer has you enslaved to his way of thinking and living, attacks will come, temptations will come, and trials and tribulation will come, to attempt to stunt your spiritual growth, to discourage you from whole-heartedly submitting your will to God’s will, but you will have the resources to overcome, especially if you have other Christian believers who are helping you along the way.

Going back to verse 15, we will grow in the desire and capacity to no longer live for ourselves but will instead live for Jesus Christ. This transformation will cause an insatiable hunger and thirst in your soul to live what you now believe, to express your new-found faith, and to please your Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.

Hold your place in 2 Corinthians and turn with me in your Bible to Book of Romans. We will briefly look at two very familiar verses and add a third that is not quite as familiar to most.

Romans 12:1-3

We took the better part of a month to study this passage when we worked our way through the Book of Romans on Wednesday evenings, a few years ago, so there is most obviously a ton of things here that we could study and apply, but I want you to see just a few things very briefly that pertain to our passage in 2 Corinthians.

This spiritual transformation is instantaneous for anyone who has been truly saved, and any growth that we experience is a work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, but while we do not have a part in salvation, we do have a part to play in our growth and sanctification. Paul urges us, by the grace and mercies of God, to fully engage in our part.

We must offer up our will and our passions and desires, offer up our very lives to God for Him to do as He wills with everything about us. Paul calls it a living and holy sacrifice on our part, which is our spiritual service of worship to God – it is a divine expectation for every believer’s life. And we do this by resisting the old nature, by resisting the pull of the world to continue living for ourselves and to instead somewhat continue the transformation that began with our salvation, by intentionally and consistently and diligently renewing our minds. And our minds are renewed through the reading and study of our Bible, which then will have an internal compulsion to apply what we are learning as new creations in Christ.

Our hearts and souls and even minds are indeed transformed at salvation, but we must still feed our minds. A truly transformed mind will desire the milk and meat of God’s Word as out appetite for the things of the world diminishes.

Paul then says that this responsibility that each believer has will prove our salvation is genuine, which is good and acceptable to God. And then in verse 3, which is often overlooked, this ongoing transformation of growing in Christ will be manifest in humility – we will no longer be so full of ourselves, especially in taking credit for the spiritual growth that we do achieve through the working of the Holy Spirit. There may be some initial pride in our spiritual growth, but the more we grow, the more we understand God’s grace in salvation and in sanctification, the more we will divert all the glory to God.

That was a drive-by summation of this rich passage in Romans, and there is a ton more truth that we could dig out, but we need to get back to our primary passage for this morning.

2 Corinthians 5:17

Paul uses the terminology of being “in Christ” quite often throughout his Epistles – it is his primary choice for identifying true salvation. In the first three chapters of the Book of Ephesians, Paul uses this term or something similar 22 times to identify the saved, the elect, the redeemed of the Lord. The believer’s identity is one who is in Christ. If you are saved and someone asked the question, “Who are you?”, you could truthfully respond that you are “in Christ” – that is your transformed identity as a new creation.

And let’s talk about what it means to be a new creation. The word translated as “new” in our English versions of the Bible, means in the sense that it is used here to be “original and of a new kind not seen before”. It means new in quality, and it coincides with how Jesus describes salvation to Nicodemus in John 3 – born again. It is a new birth, a new creature, new creation, new existence. We can at times talk about needing a fresh start – you can’t get any fresher than this. All things are new.

Romans 6:6 says, “that our old self was crucified with (Christ), in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin”. In Ephesians 4:22and in Colossians 3:9, Paul writes about how that in our sanctification, we “lay aside the old self”, meaning that after this transformation at salvation and the inevitable struggles that we will have in keeping the old nature at bay, we can at any time as a new creation in Christ, lay aside the old self that keeps attempting to take over.

The transformation that happens with each of us at the very moment of salvation, causes and allows the old things to pass away. Our old values, old mindsets, old ideas, old plans, old desires, old aspirations, old agendas, old goals, and old beliefs. We can obviously choose to put that old self back on at times, but it will no longer satisfy because it is dead and rotting and it stinks. This is why genuine believers who go through periods of time when they walk away from God and rebel against His Word, can’t stay there for very long. The old self, the old manner of life, the relationship that we had with patterns of sin no longer fit, they’re no longer comfortable, and they do not satisfy the way they once did.

And with this passing away of the old things it says that new things have come. God plants new desires, new passions, new behaviors, new ways of thinking, new habits, and new loves in our hearts and minds, so that we are equipped to live in the midst of the old creation with a new creation perspective. Paul elaborates on this in Galatians 6:14 where he wrote, “But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

For as long as we inhabit these mortal bodies, we will be confronted with the old nature trying to reassume control, trying to draw us back into our old patterns of sin, our old love for the things of the world, our old lusts, and our old habits. But new things have come, which includes, most of all, the Holy Spirit and His infinite never-ending power that can easily defeat the old nature.

And as we develop the righteous patterns of the new, as we practice the new, as we incorporate the new into every facet of our lives, and as we fill every void that was left behind by the old with the new, we gain victory after victory over sin as we become more conformed the image of Jesus Christ.

As I already mentioned, this is not and never will be a smooth ride. Just when we think that we have mastery over a sin that has plagued us in the past, we will inevitably let our guard down, fall back into such sins, get frustrated, feel condemned, and if we are not careful, allow Satan’s lies to creep back into our consciousness.

Don’t go there! As we will study and develop next week in verse 19, God is no longer counting our trespasses against us. Those of us who have this new nature, meaning those of us who are saved, redeemed, converted, transformed, declared righteous by Yahweh Himself, have been eternally cleansed and purified from the penalty of sin, and we can start fresh with every lapse back into sin with the knowledge that living within us in the Person of the Holy Spirit, is the awesome power that we have access to every minute of every day to defeat temptation and sin every stinking time.

The Book of Lamentations tells us that His mercies are new every morning, and they are, but that it is not the full truth under the New Covenant of grace. Since the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross, and since His resurrection, and since His ascension, and since the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all who believe, His mercies are new every second of every day.

Beloved, as a blood-bought soul who has been justified by Jesus Christ, we should never again allow guilt and shame to cause us to hang our heads, for Jesus Christ is the lifter of our heads, the Savior of our souls, the propitiation for our sins, the lover of our lives, the atonement for our transgressions, One who has cancelled the debt we owed to Holy God, and the Victor over Satan, sin, and death. You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed about anymore!

Yes, do battle against sin at all times, seek the help of the Holy Spirit with even the hint of temptation in your life, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, put on the whole armor of God every morning, and be alert for your adversary the devil like a roaring lion is always on the prowl seeking for whom he may devour, but do not, do not, do not allow shame and condemnation to have a foothold in your life – Christ paid for that on the cross and you don’t live in the old nature anymore! You have been delivered, rescued, forgiven, loved with an everlasting love, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, justified in the sight of God the Father, sealed with the Holy Spirit of God, and protected by the power of His Word!

You are a new creation in Christ, the old things have passed away; behold, new things have forever come!

Let’s pray.