Christian Launch Pad
With Seb Lannuzel
It's funny how a little bit of detail can completely alter your perspective. It's like doing a dot to dot picture. When you start it looks like an indiscernible mess, and then a couple of lines from the end it all becomes clear.
As a younger Christian I really struggled with my relationship with God. He was so perfect and righteous, I was so…...not. The whole of my Christian life became about trying to clean myself up so I could enjoy a relationship with God. It was an endless, tiring, impossible task.
The problem was, like a lot of people, I had my identity and my actions blurred into one, not realising the great miracle that had happened when I became a Christian. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 5:17,
“Anyone who is in Christ is a brand new creation, old things have passed away and behold all things have become new.”
When I became a Christian I still looked the same. I still had some of the same thoughts and the same feelings. There was one tiny detail missing - what was the real me? Jesus said that, “God is a Spirit and those who worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth,” (John 4:24).
We are spirits too. We have a soul and we live in a body (2 Thessalonians 5:23). We are very conscious of our body and our soul, and usually find our identity in a mixture of the two. But there is, in a deeper place, an eternal you, a spiritual you, and that's the you that God sees.
That's where your true, eternal identity and nature is found. That's the part of you that was born again and has become a new creation in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”.
Notice, this isn't talking about our actions, it's taking about a state of being. The old me came from Adam and was fallen, the new me comes from Christ and is righteousness. The good news is, that if you've been born again, you have become the righteousness of God. Your actions cannot change who you are!
Just as before you where a Christian, any righteous actions couldn't make you righteous, now the opposite is true. You have become righteousness (it's the new spirit that you are), and your actions no matter how sinful can't change your nature.
Romans 12:2 says, “That we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.” We are now the righteousness of God, all the time, but our minds have been programmed to believe that we're not. Philemon 1:6 says, “The sharing of our faith may become effective by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.”
When I realised I had become everything I was supposed to be in Christ, and all I needed to do was change the way I think, my life as a Christian changed. I wrote out all the scriptures that talked about the new me. I would read them everyday, say them out loud, and renew my mind. Through this process I began to enjoy the righteous state that I was living in by the grace and kindness of God in Christ. My life has never been the same.
I pray this will be your experience too, in the words of Jesus I pray, “That you would know the truth and the truth would make you free,” (John 8:32)
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