2 Corinthians 5: 17

Jon & April Hunter

Life is all change for me at the moment. I got engaged last week ( huzzah ). I've got to get my head around the concept of life as a single man being no more! I now have to look at approaching life as half of a couple. This means some things are going to have to change. However, in a very good way, things are never going to be the same again.

This same kind of thing happened when we became Christians, everything changed. The Bible says very clearly that when we become Christians, we literally become new people; the old life went away, and the new life came to stay, (2 Corinthians 5: 17)

The Bible is very clear about what we were. It describes us as sinners, broken, out of favour with God, hurt and at the mercy of the enemy. The only way to God was through His choice to forgive us, but it didn't stop there. God is good, He does not leave us as broken wrecks; He restores and renews us completely. He creates us again, as new people who are different, on top of things, whole, forward seeking, no longer buried by life, but able to deal with life's troubles. Wow!

But lets be honest, some days it doesn't feel like that's the kind of change that's happened in us. Maybe even most days, we feel no different than we did before, we may even feel like we are worse than we were before! Sometimes it feels like everything's gone wrong and the world's about to fall in on us. As Christians life can be hard!

So what's the deal? Do we go with the Bible, or our experience? How do the two meet?

Is life really that simple? What about when we don't feel like a new creation? What does a 'new creation' mean? These are all good questions and each takes a lifetime to really answer fully, but here we will briefly summarise.

As Christians we cannot rely on our emotions and experience, but on the things that God has spoken to us through the Bible. We start with understanding what God has done, and then we work that out into our daily lives, (Romans 12: 2). It's at that point we start to actually feel the difference that God makes.

What did the Father do for us when we became Christians?

- We had our sins forgiven. (Acts 10: 43)
- We were spiritually born. (1 Peter 1:23)
- We became sons of God. (Galations 3: 26)
- Gods Spirit dwells within us. (1 Corinthians 3: 16)
- We were given spiritual authority. (Matthew 10: 1)
- We no longer have to sin. (Romans 6: 6)
- Our core nature changes. (2 Corinthians 5: 17)

There is so much more that God has done for us, but understanding these core truths, lays a good foundation. We don't always feel each one of them all the time, but we can trust they are true, because the Bible says they are! As we make an effort to grasp, believe, and understand God's truth, the feelings follow in time, and the truth starts to become real to our emotions, situations, and everyday lives.

As Christians I think we need to

1) Know who we are as Christians,
2) How to work God's truth out in our lives.
3) Know that we still look towards a future glory.

The next time I am writing we will look a little deeper into how to make being a new person count, and how we can let God make a difference in out lives.