Identity Theft pt. 5

God in His grace entered into our world to rescue us from what sin was doing to our lives and what it would continue to do and where it would eventually take us in eternity.  God entered our world in the Person of Jesus and saved us--buying us back from sin and death. While he did this primarily for His own glory and His great Name, He also desires for us to live lives of victory, love, hope, peace, joy, and purpose. Unfortunately many many people whom God has rescued through Jesus find themselves still stuck in old behaviors, old ways of thinking, and old habits.  This is often linked denying truth and believing lies instead.  One truth that we fail to embrace is that we have been "transferred into the kingdom of His beloved son" (Colossians 1:13). Conseqently the lies we believe are...

LIE #5

I CAN’T CHANGE

THINGS WILL ALWAYS BE THIS WAY

IT'S MY PERSONALITY

I NEED TO BE TRUE TO MYSELF
IT'S JUST WHO I AM

Believing these lies can keep us from experiencing the life God has for us, and keep us trapped in a cycle of returning to the same hopeless patterns of sinful behavior again and again. In order to experience this truth we first must understand what is our responsibility and what is God's.  We must identify what things God has accomplished and what things we must do.

What God has Done

Through the work of Jesus Christ, God has accomplished the following:

• He has made us qualified. We have a justified (righteous) standing before God.
• We are an heir. We share in the inheritance and our position in the family of God is secure.
• He has delivered from the domain of darkness. He has freed us from the authority, rule and power of sin.
• He has transferred into the kingdom of Christ. We now live under the authority of and in the kingdom of God.

These are spiritual realities--our spiritual identity--that God has made happen for you. If you have trusted in Jesus Christ by faith, this is true of you, without doubt. Unfortunately for many, this spiritual reality is never experienced as a physical or actual reality, because we miss one very important part. Our part.

What We must Do

Romans 6:1-11 describes how God accomplished all He as done for us. It was accomplished in Jesus Christ. Jesus took upon himself the punishment that we deserved. As we identify with Jesus, the Bible calls that placing your faith in Jesus, then we can share in his identity. His punishment serves as our punishment. His Crucifixion is our crucifixion. His death to sin is our death to sin. His righteousness becomes our righteousness. His life is our life.

Verse 12 begins with "therefore". In other words, "because of all this, here's what you should do," or "if you believe this, you should act like this." This is where our part begins.

1. We must believe this to be a spiritual reality. 

We must accept it as true. We must accept and embrace that Christ has qualified, adopted, delivered, and transferred us. We must renew our minds to this truth that our old life to sin is dead and our new life we live to God.

2. We must not cooperate with our old life of sin.

Romans 6:12 says that we must "not let sin have rule over our bodies."  We must "not offer the parts of our bodies to be used as instruments of unrighteousness". Verses 12-14 use words like "let" and "offer". These aren't words of captivity, authority or oppression (because we are dead to sin and it no longer has power over us), but rather words of cooperation. So the instruction is to not cooperate with our sinful desires. That's our part.

What We can Experience

In the kingdom of Christ bad habits are overcome, struggling marriages are healed, broken relationships are restored, and depression finds hope. This can happen when our physical realities begin to match up with our spiritual reality, when our behavior begins to reflect our spiritual identity. These two realities must work together. As we embrace what God has done for us--the new identity He has given us--we then refuse to cooperate with our old identity and we begin to experience the new reality of life in Christ's Kingdom.