NEW CREATIONS IN CHRIST.

DAILY DEVOTION.

DAY FOUR.

2 CORINTHIANS 5:17.    Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; all things have become new.
Paul is saying here that if anyone is in Christ we are a new creation, so what does it mean to be in Christ? does it mean that we are somehow inside of Jesus? no it doesn't, what it does mean is that we have accepted the finished work of the cross, Jesus is our Lord and Savior, we have been born again and we are now in spiritual relationship with Him. So what does it mean to be a new creation? Does it mean that somehow the old person disappeared, and people now see a brand new version of us? No of course not. we are talking here about our spirituality, when we were born, we were born dead in sin, spiritually separated from God because we inherited the sin of Adam. Jesus said to Nicodemus in John three that we needed to be born again so that we could understand the kingdom of God and enter into it, to be born again is to be spiritually rejuvenated, to be brought back into spiritual life again, back into spiritual relationship with God, In Ezekiel 36;26-27 God promises there that He will give us a new heart, that He will remove the old dead heart of stone, and that He will put His Spirit within us and that He will write His word on our hearts so that we can walk in them. The word heart refers to our spiritual man or as Paul calls it, the inner man. The new word does not mean something that has never existed before, but rather to rebuild or repair. So God restores our spirit back into Spiritual relationship with Him and then is able to put His Spirit in our spirit. We have now been made alive spiritually. Paul describes it this way in Ephesians 2:1 And you He made alive, who were once dead in trespasses and sins. and in verses 4-5 he says; But God who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.  He goes on to say in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that old things have passed away, all things have been made new. The old thing that Paul is referring to there is the old man, the old spiritual nature that kept us bound to Adam. Paul says in Romans 6:6 "Knowing this that the old man has been crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin." That there is the old Adam, the old sin nature. We are no longer related to Adam spiritually, we are now in Christ, He is our spiritual identity. The nature of a mans spirit determines the nature of the man. Many Christians will say that they are just old sinners, this is totally wrong, We are now in Christ spiritually, Christ is not a sinner, Paul goes on in that passage in 2 Corinthians 5 in verse 21 to say, "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" We are now the righteousness of God in Christ. In 2 Peter 1:3-4 Peter says there that God's divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, and that through His promises we are now partakers of God's divine nature. This does not mean that we are now some how divinity, but rather we now have God's divine nature living in us through His Holy Spirit. Peter says in those verses that we now have all that we need to live Godly lives.If we still think that we are sinners, then we need to read Psalm 1 David in that Psalm clearly shows the difference between the sinner and the Godly or righteous man. He says in verse five that the sinner will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. Yes we still sin, we still fall short of God's best for our lives, and we should never take that lightly, our desire should be to walk in the righteousness that we now have in Christ. Paul encourages us in both Ephesian 2:22-24 and Colossians 3:9 to put off our old habits, the old things that we used to walk in, and now have our minds renewed to the knowledge of who we are in Christ and to put on or walk in the new man who has been created in the image of Christ, in other word to walk in His righteousness. But if we do fall, and we will, remember we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ and if we come before the throne of grace in repentance and confess our sin, God is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleans us from it. Don't allow the enemy to lie to you and say that you can't be forgiven or that God does not love you because of what you have done. God is a God of restoration, He will restore you, we just have to learn from our mistakes, press back into the things of God and continue to move forward. So be encouraged, if you are in Christ, you are no longer an old sinner but a new creation in Christ, made God's righteousness and God has given you all the things that you need through the power of His Spirit to live a Godly and victorious life.