New Life

When you become alive in Christ, when God puts His life into you, then you aren’t the same any more. You have a new nature, and your old sinful nature is nailed to the cross. “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.” Galatians 5:24 As we look to the day when His will is done on earth as it is in heaven we can see there are certain things that have no place in heaven, and so should have no place in our lives now we have been made alive with new life. Things like greed, injustice, pride, division, exploitation, anger, disgrace. 1 John 5:18 reminds us that “We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them.”
We can’t be the same after we encounter the love and grace of God. It changes us. We become a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come. Jesus paid a high price to set us free. We cannot remain ensnared in the same sin and folly as before.The way we show the world we are a new creation with a new life is by how we live. We need to show the world we are different from non-Christians. We need to be in the world but not of the world. We will not influence the world by being exactly like the world.
If we want people to take seriously our message that we have received new life from God and they can too, we need to show them that we take it seriously. We need to show them that God has made a difference in our lives in order for them to be open to letting God make a difference in their lives.
There are things that should no longer have any place in our life because they are sinful. The passions and desires of our sinful nature have been nailed to the cross. We need to leave them there and not be controlled by them anymore. There are other things that aren’t sinful that still should no longer have any place in our life because while they aren’t bad, they aren’t best. We have new life and new desires. Our chief desire should be to glorify God and edify others. That is what needs to influence every choice we make. “Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honour at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth” Colossians 3:1-2. Let your sight be fixed on the things of heaven rather than the things of earth as we strive to show the glory of new life with Christ to the world around us.