What would your life be like if you saw yourself as God sees you? Unless you are filled with spiritual arrogance, you likely judge and criticize yourself unfairly occasionally (or maybe even on a daily basis). You probably are very quick to point out your sins to yourself and just as quick to dismiss your Christ-like attributes you have grown into over the years. Maybe we should live more by the saying: The key is progress NOT perfection. The old slave trader turned Christian John Newton wrote, “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be; but I am not what I once used to be…”.
When we come to Christ we are made new – we are born again. But that is not the only time we are made new. Paul writes, “that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Ephesians 4:22-24). God’s word says that we are constantly being renewed. It is an everyday process AND we are passive as God is the One renewing us as we submit to Jesus in faith.
Read II Corinthians 5:14-17 and listen to I Am New by Jason Gray. Then go be new today and tomorrow and the next day and…
2 Corinthians 5:14-17
Therefore from now on we recognize no one by the flesh; even though we have known Christ by the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.