YOUR OLD LIFE IS GONE
You have seen that you are made new.
Now you need to understand what that means about your past.
THE END OF
THE OLD REGIME
Salvation is not adding something to your old life.
It is the end of your old life and the beginning of something completely new.
Your old identity, the one shaped by sin, separation from God, and the way you used to live, is no longer who you are. It has been put to death.
“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.”
Sin is no longer your master.
It no longer defines you.
DEAD VS. ALIVE
Before this, you were spiritually dead, living according to the world and your own desires. Now you have been made alive.
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked… [But God] made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.”
That change is not something you slowly create. It is something God has already done.
Because of this, you cannot keep defining yourself by your past. If you continue to see yourself the same way, you are holding onto something that God has already put to death.
[ X ] What you have done does not define you anymore.
[ X ] What you were is not your identity anymore.
THE SEVERED TIE
This does not mean you will never struggle.
It means that struggle is no longer who you are.
“And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
LIVING FROM THE NEW
Because your old life is gone, your direction changes. You are not trying to become a different person.
You are learning to live as someone who already is different.
“…to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
You are not creating a new identity. You are living from the one that has already been given to you.
DO NOT GO BACK TO DEFINING YOURSELF BY YOUR PAST.
DO NOT MEASURE YOURSELF BY WHAT YOU WERE.
Stand in what God has done.