Who You Are

January 14, 2016

Devotions:

        “But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, 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 ‭4:20-24‬ ‭NASB‬‬

        We are to stop seeing ourselves in the way we were before we were born again.  We were sinners, liars, thieves, murders, fornicators...  We were failures and disobedient.  But in Chirst Jesus we are the righteousness of God, we are holy.  We beat ourselves up when we sin because the enemy cries, "sinner" and our hearts cries out a woeful. "Yes." Deep in our hearts that is how we see ourselves.  We try to cover our feelings with a cheap veneer of religion but when we fail the veneer comes off at least in our hearts and we beat ourselves up. 

        Jesus dealt with sin once and for all on the cross and when we accepted what He did for us it dealt with it once and for all in our lives.  We are no longer sinners but saints, new creations in Christ Jesus.  Yes we miss it from time to time but that never changes who we are.

        The enemy would bind us with guilt and condemnation to keep us in the vicious, downward spiral of sin.  As long as we accept the condemning judgement against us, our subconscious will try to fulfill the verdict, death.  But when we know that we have been redeemed, forgiven and made righteous and holy by the blood of the Lamb and not our own works then we start walking like who God says we are. We start walking in the power of the cross.

        You are free.  Do you know it yet?