“A New Creature”

      I've been having trouble with my laptop keyboard recently. Yesterday, the problem became severe, and Frances (brilliant, as always) came up with the idea of plugging in an old desktop keyboard I can use until we get a new part for my laptop.

     Life is often like that. We improvise until and if we can repair or replace things that aren't working properly. God, on the hand, does not merely repair and replace as He administers His saving grace in those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

    "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new" (II Corinthians 5:17).

    The new birth does not merely change who and what we are. It rather births a person who did not exist before the Spirit of Christ entered into the heart. In the deepest part of us, the very heart of us, we are not who we were before we believed. We are not merely ourselves, but we are ourselves as united to the Lord Jesus.  Christ lives in us, we live in Christ, and together, life is known as "we" rather than simply me or He.

    Certainly, we do not always feel and think accordingly, nor do we perfectly act as if our Savior dwells with and within us.  We need frequent reminders of the “new creature” we are in Christ, reminders that illuminate us primarily by the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and our fellow believers.  How easily we feel ourselves to be alone, and how stridently our spiritual enemies seek to convince us that this is indeed the case.  Never is it true, however, that we are merely ourselves.  Again, the born again Christian lives in both time and eternity with Somebody.  We’re not merely a “me,” and we’re surely not “He.”  We are a “we.”

“I will never leave thee nor forsake thee “ promises the Lord who joyfully made our heart His home when we believed (Hebrews 13:5). 

     The “new creature” we are in Christ was “created in righteousness and true holiness” because it exists in such spiritual proximity to God that the Apostle Paul wrote, “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (Ephesians 4:24; I Corinthians 6:17).   Our Heavenly Father continually works by His Spirit to illuminate, encourage and challenge us to remember the wondrous gift given when we believed, the gift of Himself to our hearts.  May we continually respond with the affirmation of “We!”, and thus, with the remembrance that salvation in the Lord Jesus did not merely repair or replace us.   It rather birthed us as a new creation forever united to the One who died to make our hearts His home.

“I am with you always.”

(Matthew 28:20)