Your New Reality

I once heard a Pastor talking about a subject he called “New Creation Realities.”  He was talking about all that happens to us when we receive Jesus Christ.  At one point he exclaimed, “And it’s a reality!”  While this statement may have sounded redundant to all he had said already, he was making a very important point that we all need to hear.  What the Bible says about you, especially what is says about you spiritually in Christ, is in fact, your reality.  You cannot see it.  You cannot feel it.  But it is just as real as anything else about you.  We must understand it, accept it, and live by it. 

Many of you have probably taken an “Identity in Christ” class or something like that.  Those are great classes.  We have to learn what the Bible says about us, and about who we are in Christ.  I find that most people, even those who are very aware of their identity in Christ, fail to allow this understanding to impact their daily lives.  And maybe this is one of the overarching themes of my teachings here, we must allow what we learn from God to impact every area of our lives.

Maybe you have never taken an Identity in Christ class.  That’s ok, we are going to run through the basics today.  And if you have, taken such a class, this will be a good refresher to help spur you on a bit.  Because after you have taken an Identity in Christ or similar class, your life should look very different from your life before. 

So let me ask, for those of you who have taken that class, is that true for you?  I don’t mean immediately, but in looking back over the years, do you see major shifts in your thinking and actions because of your identity in Christ?  You should.  I’m not getting down on you if you don’t, but listen to me today and you’ll see how it should impact your life.  If you let it, it will impact and improve every part of you and your existence, and it will set you on the path to accomplishing all that God has for you.

You need to understand that God has great things planned for you.  This is part of your reality in Christ.  Ephesians 2:10 says (NLT) “For we are God’s masterpiece.  He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.” 

We could say much about the “good things” God has planned for you.  They are the path you are supposed to follow.  They are a tremendous source of excitement and joy for you.  Relationships, prosperity, and growth will all be found there, and so much more.  But God didn’t invite the old you into those good works.  These good works are for the new you, the new you in Christ.  I’m not saying you have to be perfect to start the good works.  I’m saying we have to be growing.  We have to be on the path.  We have to be allowing God to change us into the person we were always meant to be, and as we grow and mature, there will be good works for us all along the way. 

I’m emphasizing this because this passage in Ephesians is extremely important.  Your destiny is not a single moment in time or one amazing thing you should do.  Your destiny is to do a huge number of good works that perfectly fit with your life season and spiritual maturity all along the way.  When you get on the path of God’s good works, you go from one to the next, some big, some small, some seen, some unseen, and you live in a supernatural existence with all the purpose and excitement you could ever want.

However, if you don’t acknowledge your new realities in Christ, if you don’t recognize who you are now and keep growing in that direction, you won’t be able to do a lot of those good works.  In the simplest terms, if you aren’t loving, if you aren’t kind, if you aren’t patient, if you aren’t generous, God is limited in how He can use you and you are limited in the good works you can do.  I hope we wouldn’t need to argue about that.  God wants to use the “in Christ” you, not the old you.  The “in Christ” you is like Him and becoming more like Him every day.  That’s the you that God uses in the good works. 

Let me stress again that I’m not saying you have to be perfect to start doing good works for God.  No matter where you are in this journey, God has good works for you.  Even if you never mature at all, God still has some good works for you.  They will be hard to find because they are revealed by the Holy Spirit, so keep that in mind if you aren’t maturing, but I’m sure you could still find some out of God’s mercy and grace.  Yet when God sees a person studying, praying, opening their heart to change, and desiring maturity, God starts opening doors.  God also starts doing His supernatural work inside you to change your nature even in your mind and emotions. 

Now let’s talk about the next levels of growth for good works.  The first levels are developing Godly character traits and the fruits of the Spirit.  The next levels are true spiritual maturity, operating in your Spiritual gifts, and walking in Divine power.  God has all of those for you as well, and those allow you to operate in another realm of good works.  Understanding your spiritual reality, who you really are in Christ, is a master key to going to those higher levels. 

When you encounter a sick or injured person do you lay hands on them and say “Be healed in the Name of Jesus!”  Some of you do, and that’s wonderful.  I do it sometimes, not as much as I should.  That person also should have some faith on their side, but my point is that we should start thinking this way.  All Christians have this authority and ability.  All Christians should continue the healing ministry of Jesus (just as we see all 12 disciples and the 72 other disciples all doing in Luke chapters 9 and 10).  I’m not getting down on you if you don’t operate this way, but when you learn who you are in Christ, and when you let that knowledge flow into your daily life, you will.

It’s high time for the Body of Christ to let our New Christian Realities impact every aspect of our daily lives.  But many of us don’t fully understand these realities.  Furthermore, it’s not enough to hear them once.  We need to study these verses and meditate them so that we can have them become a part of our foundational and operational mental frameworks.

So let’s get a basic handle on our new reality now that we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and let’s try to do this in a clear and concise way.  I highly encourage you to study these verses for yourself when you have some time because we are going to mention a lot of amazing verses today. 

First of all, you must understand that humans are a spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23).  When you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, by believing in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord (Romans 10:9), you are born again (1 Peter 1:3, 1:23). 

Your body and your soul are not born again, your spirit is.  Jesus discussed this in John 3.  Your spirit gets born again.  This is essential to coming into relationship with God.  You must be born again (John 3:7).  When you are born again, your spirit is immediately recreated directly by God.  God, a spirit, literally gives birth to your spirit.  That is why it says in 1 John 3:9 that God’s seed (Greek – sperma) is in us. 

God gave birth to you when you got saved.  Let’s briefly mention that when I say “you” I mean the real you, your spirit.  You are a spirit, you have a soul, and you live in a body.  Get that down deep in your thinking. 

Your spirit has been born from God.  Now you are God’s child (Romans 8:16).   This new spirit God has created is not just you, but in fact it is a unified spirit between you and God.  It is both you and also a unified spirit with God (1 Corinthians 6:17).  So God’s Spirit both comes to live inside your physical body (Ephesians 1:13, 1 Corinthians 6:19) and God’s spirit joins itself to your spirit in a perfect union.

When you understand those points, you understand much of what Jesus said in His long teaching to the disciples in John 14-17.  God and Jesus are with you always, and they are with you in the presence and union of Holy Spirit (John 14:23).  They will always be with you, this is an eternal union between you and God. 

In fact, and this is really amazing, your spiritual reality doesn’t just exist inside your physical body.  Ephesians 2:6 says “For (God) raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.”  In the same way that your spirit is united with God’s spirit inside your physical body, your spirit is united with God’s spirit inside the very throne room of God.  Is that crazy and awesome or what!! Now think about the verse (Hebrews 4:16) where it says we should come boldly before the throne of grace.  We are already there in the throne room.  We are already united with Christ.

These are wonderful, wonderful realities, but let’s go further.  As you have been born again, God now sees you as perfect.  Hebrews 10:14 says “For by one offering He forever made perfect those who are being made holy.”  That is us.  Jesus gave one offering to God, Himself, and with His blood we are forever made perfect.  Yes, you might sin and make mistakes, and those sins might mess up your life.  But you are never going to be any less perfect in the eyes of God.  There is no sin you could ever commit that would impact your perfection, because your perfection is determined by the blood of Jesus, not by your works.

Again, you received perfection by faith in Christ, not by your works, so your works can’t impact your perfection.  You should separate these concepts in your mind.  Your works for God are important and have good and bad impacts on your life and this world.  But they do not impact your salvation or your perfection before your Heavenly Father.  You could never do enough to earn your salvation.  You could never do enough to lose your salvation (aside from deliberately rejecting the faith and Christ, which might be possible, but let’s not get into that today).

This idea of your righteousness, your freedom from sin, is so important that you need to really have a personal revelation of it.  2 Corinthians 5:21 says “God made Him (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”  You aren’t just righteous, you are the righteousness of God.  That sounds crazy, but now that we know we are God’s biological children and that God has unified His Spirit with us, maybe it’s not so crazy.  Of course, given our union with God, we share His righteousness.  It would be weird for us to have some other type or level of righteousness and still be united in spirit with God.

So you are righteous in God’s eyes, and it’s not some low level, human righteousness.  God sees you as righteous with His righteousness.  Think about that the next time you feel weird even talking to God because you messed up.  When you think about it, you probably won’t feel differently physically or mentally, these aren’t physical or mental things.  But go to God anyway.  You don’t need to feel it.  You just do it.  You don’t feel righteousness.  You have to know that it’s your reality.  What’s more real, what you feel or what your mind says to you, or what the Bible says?

That also needs to become a big part of your mental framework.  We should think and live according to what the Bible says.  Yes I messed up.  Yes I sinned.  But yes, I’m still righteous.  I’m still going to go boldly before the throne of Grace.  I’m going right up to God to say I’m sorry and ask for His help to make it right, to do better next time.  I’m still going to live in the light of my new spiritual reality, who I really am in the eyes of God.  I may have been really ugly at someone at work, but I’m ready to pray for someone that needs it two seconds later. 

Folks, I’ve been there.  I’ve had some bad moments with my work or with my wife, and then in the next moment encountered a situation where I needed to pray immediately.  The Holy Spirit has never said to me, wait, you just messed up, I don’t want you to pray right now.  On the contrary, I feel like what He says in those moments is, “yes, you messed up, and we can talk about that later, but you are still one of My people and you need to pray.” 

Friends, we need to live in the light of our New Creation Realities on our good days and on our bad days.  I’m going to think this way when everything is going right and when it seems like everything is going wrong.  I am going to live and move and have my being in Christ and in the reality He has given to me even if hell and everything this world can bring against me seem to be winning in that moment.

Moving on.  In addition to God’s righteousness, you have God’s love.  You have God’s love for you to both experience and to share.  Let’s start with God’s love for you to experience.  Romans 8:38-39 teaches us that nothing can separate us from God’s love.  That includes our sin.  God will never stop loving you, His perfect child.  You are part of Him now.  You are one with Him.  You are one with His love because He is love (1 John 4:8).  He is love and you are one with Him, obviously nothing can separate you from His love!

If that doesn’t help you, then understand that He loves you as much as He loves Jesus (John 17:23).  Jesus earned His love.  Jesus was and is perfect, the only one deserving of His love.  And now that we are in Christ, and perfect with Jesus’ perfection, God loves us the same.  He loves us on this level because we are in Christ, and we are now entitled to His love in the same way that Jesus is entitled to His love. 

Again, you should separate these concepts in your mind.  Just as your righteousness is not earned or impacted by your behavior, God’s love for you is not earned or impacted by your behavior.  Yes, God loves everyone, including all the sinful people in the world.  But they are not in the relationship with Him that you are.  People who are not Christians have not had the Holy Spirit pour God’s love into their hearts (Romans 5:5).  You are one with Him and His love.  You are united with Him in love in ways that they will never be.  You’ve come into this loving relationship with God not through your works, but through your faith.  God loves you this way because of your faith in Christ, not because of your works.  You should never think twice about God’s love for you again, even on your worst day!

There is so much more we could talk about, and we will in the days ahead.  You need to understand your inheritance, your blessings, your promises, all that comes with your new reality.  But for today, focus on your reality in Christ.

If you are a Christian, you are now an eternal spirit like God.  In fact, you are the perfect, biological child of God.  You are united with God in Spirit.  You are united with God’s love.  You are the very righteousness of God.  God loves you as much as He loves Jesus, even if you still don’t act much like Jesus.  You are already seated in Christ in the very throne room of God.  These are your eternal realities regardless of what is happening in your natural world today.

So let me ask you, do you think this way?  Do you see yourself this way?  Do you allow these truths to be both foundational and pervasive in your thought life?  If not, this is a big part of the mental renovation you need so you can live in God’s perfect will.

Regarding your natural life, God has created you in Christ for a lifetime of amazing good works, a lifetime of loving relationships with God and others.  There is so much out there for you to do and experience.  Just take a moment to pray.  Pray that God would help you understand these truths from His Word.  Pray that the Holy Spirit would have such a strong presence in you that you are constantly aware that He is with you, and that these New Creation Realities are your reality.  Pray that God would help you develop a new identity, truly an identity founded upon your identity in Christ.  From this new identity, you are destined to change the world, one good work at a time.  God bless you.