2Cor. 5:17 (Amp) says, "Therefore if any person is ingrafted in Christ Jesus (the Messiah), he is a new creation (a new creature altogether). The old previous moral and Spiritual condition is passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come."
Many in the Body of Christ see ourselves as being only "sinners saved by Grace," which is True, but we have also been created new in Christ Jesus. We are new creations that have never existed before, just like the universe never existed outside of God's heart and mind, before He created it. The new creation people didn't exist in God's creation, until Jesus' death and resurrection. We're not just cleaned-up, polished and renewed sinners, but we're new creations in God's eyes. We're made Righteous with God's Own Righteousness.
We've been taught that God sees us as lower class citizens and that we must work to become what Jesus has already made us to be. We need to understand what it cost God, in order to make us righteous in His sight and we must walk in total thanksgiving for His mercy and favor. We must live up to what the Father has done for us, in Jesus. James writes about our looking into the mirror or Word of God and then forgetting what we looked like in James 1:22-26 (Amp), saying, "But be doers to the Word (obey the Message,) and not merely listeners to it, betraying yourselves into deception by reasoning contrary to the Truth. For if anyone only listens to the Word without obeying it and being a doer of it, he is like a many who looks carefully at his own natural face in the mirror; For he thoughtfully observes himself, and then goes off and promptly forgets what he was like." When you look into a mirror, it shows who you are and not who you WERE. When you see yourself like the Word shows you to be, then that's the "real" you, which is a new creation. We're to take away the Finished Work that Jesus did to make us sons and daughters of God. Jesus' Sacrifice made us righteous, clean, justified, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ and one spirit with Him. Verses 25-26 go on, saying, "But he who looks carefully into the faultless Law (the Law of Liberty), and is faithful to it and persevere in looking into it, being not a heedless listener who forgets but an active doer who obeys, he shall be Blessed in his doing (his life of obedience). If anyone thinks himself to be religious (piously observant of external duties of his faith), and does not bridle his tongue but deludes his own heart, this person's religious service is worthless, futile, barren."
When we see who Jesus has made us to be in God's Word and then deny what He has done by calling ourselves "only forgiven sinners" and "unrighteous," then we're forgetting what the mirror of God's Word has shown us to be and disqualify ourselves from God's Blessing, by default. We've been taught that we're unworthy in ourselves (and we are), but we're no longer in our own selves, but we are in Him. This is having faith in what Jesus has already done for us, instead of relying on our works to become righteous. Like a mirror, God's Word shows who we've been made to be in this new creation. New creations don't have a past, because it never before existed.
We need to understand what God and His Word have made us to be already. It's not some future thing. In His heart and mind, God sees us as already what Jesus made us to be. Until we understand this in our spirit, the carnal mind and the world's influence, will hold us in this carnal form of Christianity. We're what God has already made us to be, not what He's going to make us to be in the future.
We read God's Own idea of what and who He created us to be from the beginning in Romans 8:29-30 (Amp) which says, "For those whom He foreknew (of whom He was aware and Loved beforehand), He also destined from the beginning fore-ordained them [this was before God made His Own family, Adam and Eve] to be molded into the Image of His Son and share inwardly His Likeness, that He might become the first born among many brethren. And those whom He thus fore-ordained, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified, acquitted, made righteous, putting them in right standing with Himself. And those whom He justified, He also glorified, raising them to a Heavenly dignity and condition or state of being." This is what God has already done us in Christ Jesus, but we must be doers and believers of what He says about us, instead of what the world and it's external ideas portray us to be.
We must let the old man/woman die the death of the cross with Jesus, in order to develop the new creation man/woman. We must allow ourselves to be raised with Jesus and become the new creation persons Jesus came to restore to the Father. "The wages of sin is death," so Jesus took our sin with Him to His death and raised a new creation family who died, was buried in Baptism and raised up with Him. Jesus is the First Born of many brethren and He paid for the wages of sin, by His death. Jesus paid the debt for all that are in Him and believe in Him. We're no longer obligated to the Law, but we're alive by Grace.
Remember, the mirror of God's Word shows who we are and not who we were. We must not look into the Perfect Law of Liberty and then allow the world to put us back under the bondage of religion and the world's carnal ideas. We must look into the Perfect Law of Liberty and see who God has already made us to be, in Jesus. If we're still unworthy, unrighteous and old sinners, then Jesus failed the mission He was sent to do.
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