You’ve made the decision to make Jesus Christ your Lord and
Savior. And according to what you’ve been taught, that’s all you need
to
do to be saved. How reassuring it is to memorize your first verse, John
3:16!
For God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but
have everlasting life.
Now you’re a Christian! And you find out that according to the Bible
in II Corinthians 5:17 , you’re now a new creature.
Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become
new.
That sounds great! But how do you deal with the "old creature" you
used to be before Jesus became your Lord? How do you stop thinking
about
the awful person you used to be? How do you get rid of the habits and
attitudes and sins you had before you became a Christian? Wouldn’t it
be
great to become as innocent as a newborn baby? You can and you must!
Just like Jesus told us in John 3:3, we must be born again.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Jesus explains further in John 3:6.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born
of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of
the Spirit is spirit.
So we can conclude that those things which happened before we were
"born again" must have been things of the flesh. In contrast, those
things which we do after we choose to believe that Jesus is the Son of
God must be the choice of our "reborn" Spirit!
What is so difficult for any adult to accept is that having been
"reborn" we are once again babies in Christ. Usually the newly reborn
Christian knows very little about his Heavenly Father, so he goes on
acting just as he did before he believed. He still watches violent
movies. He still talks badly about other people. He still smokes or
drinks beer or thinks lustful thoughts toward someone not his spouse.
The difference now is this; that newborn Christian is feeling vague
symptoms of guilt about those old behavior patterns. We feel guilty
because those old things are "passed away".
We need to learn to accept our new Christian lifestyle and let the
Holy Spirit help us to develop the characteristics that Christ is so
well known for. We call these characteristics, "The Fruits of the
Spirit" and find them listed in Galatians 5:22-23.
But the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance:
against such there is no law.
The problem is that we expect to just receive these fruits of the
spirit right along with our new Christian belief. What we need to learn
is that first we need to start believing in ourselves as Christians,
just as we believed in Jesus as the crucified, dead, risen,
resurrected,
ascended Son of God. How do we do that? How about following in the
footsteps of the man who had to totally remake himself - Paul - the
apostle who wrote most of the New Testament, including the verse
containing the words, "New Creature".
Paul wrote the words, "New Creature" from his own experience. Paul’s
Hebrew name was, "Saul". And Saul was a good Hebrew man. Saul was a
devout Jewish Pharisee, just like those pharisees Jesus was so angry
with and about which we learn in Luke 11 and 12. Jesus could have
easily
been talking directly to Saul. Paul probably heard from the other
pharisees that Jesus called them "hypocrites" and "fools" and "graves
that appear not".
As a good Jewish man, Saul took on the task of ridding the world of
those first followers of Christ. He persecuted and imprisoned them. He
threatened to have all those followers of Christ slaughtered!
This was the man Jesus chose to spread the gospel to the Gentiles
(those who are not Jewish). Saul’s conversion and salvation may have
been the fastest ever recorded. All Jesus had to say was, "Saul, Saul,
why do you persecute me?" Acts 9:4 Saul said, "Who art thou Lord?" When
Jesus identified himself, Saul immediately asked, "Lord, what will you
have me to do?"
Having seen the glorious light of Jesus proved to be too much of a
strain on Saul’s eyes and he had to be healed of his blindness. He was
healed, baptized and received the Holy Ghost and after a few days in
Damascus with the disciples, "he preached Christ in the synagogues,
that
he is the Son of God."
This man had definitely become a "New Creature". You can imagine how
Paul must have felt and what he must have thought. The Jews were amazed
at him. This was the man who had been the great persecutor! This man,
Saul, looks just the same as that guy who got letters of approval to go
to the cities outside Jerusalem to round up all the Christians to bring
back as prisoners and blasphemers against God for daring to believe
Jesus! This man, Saul, used to be a model Pharisee! He was good at
following all the Jewish rules and regulations! Why this man Saul used
to be Mr. Religious! Now he says he believes in Jesus and that all he
cares about is that Jesus was crucified and has been raised up again!
But Saul had met Jesus. Saul believed in Jesus and taking no account
of his old behavior or old memories, immediately began to preach Christ
as a new man, Paul.
Compare yourself to Paul if you’re having trouble reconciling your
new lifestyle to your old one. Stop wondering how in the world you can
be a decent Christian when you can’t stop thinking about your old life.
In the book of Acts, we learn that Saul once stood by taking care of
the
clothes of those Jewish men who stoned the first Christian martyr,
Stephen, "a young man full of faith and power who did miracles among
the
people." Saul had consented to Stephen’s death but didn’t bother to get
himself bloody by contributing to that death. Yet, in later years, as
the "new Creature" he had become, Paul was able to truthfully call
himself an apostle "by the grace of God". (I Corinthians 15:9-10)
In the same way, you can truthfully call yourself a Christian "by the
grace of God" even if you can’t be called a perfect, or fully
spiritually mature, Christian because you’re still in the process of
learning and developing the "Fruits of the Spirit."
You’ll have to use your faith to learn to believe in your new self.
Just as in the course of the interval between Acts 9 and Acts 13, Saul
became known by his Roman name of Paul, you’ll have to become used to
your new makeover, between the "old man" and the "New Creature" you
have
become. Then, you can learn to speak of yourself as Paul did when
somone
called out his old name. Paul might have answered, "Saul?… Saul who?"
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him
(Jesus), that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we
should not serve sin. (Romans 6:6)
By the prompting of the Holy Spirit and to the Glory of God,
Merrellee Moore 8/5/1999
