Christian—Do You Know Who You Are? 

Note: You’re reading Part 2 of a Changing Lives blog mini-series. Read Part 1: I See Resurrected People.

Our New Nature: Saints 

Who do you see when you look at yourself as a Christian—a dead person or a resurrected person? At your core, are you a sinner, or a saint in Christ? 

In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul describes the new you. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” 

Just a few verse later, Paul explains how this remarkable metamorphosis occurred. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). 

You Are Born Again—Regeneration 

Theologians call our new righteousness our new nature and regeneration. Regeneration addresses our need not by dressing our corrupt nature, but by supplanting it with a new nature. It’s not as if we’re an old dirty car about to be sold on the used car lot. The owner takes us to the car wash, washes dirt, dust, and grime from our exterior, but ignores the chunks of rust, not to mention leaving the same old clunky engine under the hood. Christ replaces our “engine.” He imparts new life. He re-generates us. 

To generate is to birth. We are re-birthed, born again. Born of the Spirit and Spirit gives birth to spirit (John 3:5-6). “He saved us through the washing of rebirth (regeneration) and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5b, parenthesis added). 

Birth determines nature. Born of the flesh, we have a fleshly nature. Born of sinful parents, we have a sinful nature. Born again of the Spirit, we have a new spiritual nature. Born of God, we have implanted within us a Divine, Christlike nature. “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29). 

Peter shifts the imagery from birth to seeds. You plant an apple seed, and an apple grows. Plant a peach seed, and a peach grows. Plant a fallen image bearer, and a fallen image bearer grows. Plant a regenerated image bearer, and a regenerated image bearer grows. “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1:23). God deposited a new nature that is now the core of who I am. The old nature He crucified. 

We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (regeneration). If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin (Romans 6:2-7, parenthesis and emphasis added). 

The old birth, old generation, old seed, old nature—they’re all dead. Replaced by something new, born of God. “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Romans 6:8). 

Free At Last! 

So what? Pastor and author, Tony Evans, writing in Free At Last, reminds us that the devil wants sinners to think that they are saints and saints to think that they are sinners. He wants to confuse and confound us about our core nature. The essence of our core nature is saint not sinner. I’m a saint who Satan wants to dupe into believing I am a sinner. 

If I believe that I’m a sinner, then I’ll live inclined to sin. If I’m convinced that I’m a saint, then I’ll live like a saint. “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires” (Romans 6:11-12). 

Evans wonders why we would want to hang out at the cemetery. We’re not dead. We’re alive. Risen. Our sin nature crucified—put to death. The power of sin destroyed in our lives. Christ executed the old you at the Cross. Consider, reckon, count it as true, live based on the death of the old you and the life of the new you in Christ. 

Act Like Members of the Wedding Party 

James Montgomery Boice is very helpful here when he writes: 

Believers are to follow certain Christian standards precisely because God has already made them new creatures in Christ by putting away the old nature and putting on the new. 

This is an important point. The apostle is not merely urging a new and higher standard of morality on people. This is an utterly futile thing. We cannot be genuinely better by mere moral suasion. That is not it at all. Rather, Paul is demanding a high form of behavior precisely because something decidedly has already taken place. We have already been made new in Christ. That is why we should and must act like it. 

We, like Lazarus, have been brought out of death into life by Christ. As part of that spiritual miracle our old graveclothes, which were appropriate for a corpse but not for a living body, have been taken off, and we have been reclothed in wedding garments in preparation for that great wedding supper of the Lamb. From this point on we should act like members of the wedding party (James Boice, Ephesians, pp. 166-167). 

The Rest of the Story 

Join us for Part 3 when we examine and apply The New You. 

Join the Conversation 

Are you seeing yourself and living like a sinner or a saint? 

Are you seeing yourself and living like someone enslaved or someone freed? 

Are you seeing yourself and living like someone in grave clothes or someone in wedding attire? 

Note: I’m developing this blog mini-series from my book Soul Physicians. To learn more about how to live out your new life in Christ, and how to help others to do so also, visit the Soul Physicians home page.

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth