The New You
Note: You’re reading Part 3 of a Changing Lives blog mini-series. Read Part 1: I See Resurrected People. Read Part 2: Christian—Do You Know Who You Are?
Your New Purity: Renewed in Christ
Since the old person that you once were before you came to know Christ is now dead. Since you are resurrected and made a new creation in Christ. What is the new you like?
You have a new want to and a new can do.
Through regeneration you gain divinely implanted new capacities of affection, cognition, volition , and emotion. These equip you with a nature that wants to and is able to do God’s will.
God purifies your capacities.
• Relationally: He renews your affections to long for and love Him and others.
• Rationally: He enlightens your mind to perceive life with spiritual eyes.
• Volitionally: He empowers your will to courageously choose His will.
• Emotionally: He releases us to experience life fully, without hiding or pretending.
God re-tunes your inner being so you inherently listen to Him, want Him, and are attracted to Him. You’re now on God’s wavelength.
Your New Patterns: Restored in Christ
Your new life creates new or renewed propensities and proclivities. You’re restored. Washed for salvation, you’re renewed daily in sanctification. Consider a biblical outline of the ongoing sanctification of each of your regenerated capacities.
• Renewed in Affections—Relationally: Ephesians 5:1; 5:21-6:9; 1 Peter 2:11; 1 John 2:15
• Renewed in Knowledge—Rationally: Romans 12:1-2; 2 Corinthians 10:5; Ephesians 4:20-24; Philippians 1:9; Colossians 1:10; 3:10
• Renewed in Will—Volitionally: Romans 6:17; 2 Corinthians 7:1; Ephesians 4:20-24; Philippians 2:13
• Renewed in Emotions—Emotionally: Galatians 5:13-26; Ephesians 4:19-32
Our capacities tend toward inclinations, patterns, propensities, and dispositions. We habituate ourselves to pursue what we perceive is pleasing. Just as our old nature trods a path toward sin, so our new nature walks a road marked godliness. Notice contrasts between patterns of sinfulness and themes of godliness.
• Relationally: From False Lovers/Impure Affections to Grace Lovers/Purified Affections
• Rationally: From Foolish, Fleshly Mindsets to Wise, Spiritual Mindsets
• Volitionally: From Self-Centered Purposes/Pathways to Other-Centered Purposes/Pathways
• Emotionally: From Ungoverned Mood States to Managed Mood States
Biblical counselors reckon upon and help their spiritual friends to reckon on these truths. Alive to Christ, Christians no longer have to follow the path of false lovers, foolish mindsets, self-centered pathways, and ungoverned mood states.
Biblical counselors help Christians to live out their new life in Christ by putting off the old and putting on the new. “Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness” (Romans 6:19).
Your New Life: Resurrected with Christ
God resurrected the new you to new life with Christ. What is this new life? Henry Holloman outlines seven aspects of our new creation through regeneration.
• We are partakers of the Divine nature: 1 Peter 1:3; 2 Peter 1:3-4.
• We are children of God: John 3:1-17.
• We are permanently indwelt by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: John 1:12-13; 14:20, 23; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Ephesians 4:6; Colossians 1:27.
• We receive a new heart—affections, cognitions, volition, and emotions: Romans 6:17; Galatians 4:6.
• We are empowered to receive spiritual things: 1 Corinthians 2:9-16; Hebrews 5:14.
• We are enabled to reorient our lifestyle toward righteousness: 1 John 2:29; 3:9-10.
• We experience the crucifixion of our old self and the resurrection of our new self: Romans 6:1-14; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:1-11 (Holloman, The Forgotten Blessing, pp. 31-37).
What Adam and Eve attempted to do with fig leaves and what we try unsuccessfully to achieve by our good works, Christ performed through His death, burial, and resurrection. E. K. Simpson and F. F. Bruce describe how Christ raised us to new life and the results.
The resurrection of Christ is presented by Paul as the supreme manifestation of the power of God. Those who have been raised with Christ have been raised through faith in the divine power which brought Christ back from the dead, and henceforth that power energizes them and maintains the new life with them—the new life which is nothing less than Christ’s resurrection life imparted to all the members of his body (Simpson and Bruce, Commentary on the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, p. 236).
That’s power. Changing power. Lasting power. Power that anchors us. Assures us. This is why theologians define regeneration as the impartation of spiritual life now and eternal life forever. We have not received new life to last a lifetime. We’ve received new life that lasts forever. What God begins in us at salvation, He continues in us during our lives through sanctification, and He completes in us through glorification (Romans 8:28-30).
Join the Conversation
If you really believed and applied your new purity, patterns, and life in Christ, how would your Christian life change?
If you really believed in and applied our renewal, restoration, and resurrection in and with Christ, how would your biblical counseling and spiritual friendship to others change?
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
