New Creations - Our identity in Christ
1. Why are you who you are? Why are you different than so many others?
a. What goes through your mind when you listen to the news stories, see the moral depravity so prevalent around you?
b. Stalin (killed 20 million), Ted Bundy (confessed to killing over 30 innocent women), Ahmadinejad (loosest canon with potential to kill millions in the most dangerous area on the planet), Osama Bin Laden (Father of modern Islamic terrorism), Enron (corporate deception cost retirement accounts $60 Billion, and cost 5,600 people their jobs), Kim Jong Il (nuclear powered dictator inspiring fear worldwide), Hitler (Killed 6 million in the holocaust), John Couey (convicted sex offender who kidnapped, raped and killed 9 year old Jessica Lunsford).
c. Rom.7:18 - “I know that nothing good dwells in me.”
2. Who would you be if you hadn’t received the blessings God has blessed you with?
i. These resources are God’s blessing to you - use them for Him.
3. Who would you be if God had not saved you from what might have been?
a. Family History of drug and alcohol abuse, physical, emotional or verbal abuse, sexual sin or other generational sins and the issues related to them (ex. Violent crime is related to substance abuse).
b. Sexual addictions passed on through families.
i. Note: If you did grow up in these types of settings: 1) You need to forgive and experience healing and 2) these generational sins can end with you.
4. Who would you be if God had not saved you from what you were - both natural weaknesses and sinful tendencies)?
a. Repeating mistakes can be a life trap -
i. If you’ve gotten out - thank God for 2nd, 3rd and 57th chances.
ii. If you haven’t - there is hope.
5. Take all that multiply it by time and it just gets worse.
a. Again Rom.7:18 - “I know that nothing good dwells in me.”
6. 1 Cor. 6:11 - And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
a. He’s taken what was broken and made it whole.
b. If you haven’t experienced that yet...tonight you can.
7. Identity notes condensed.
a. 3 Part beings - You are a spirit, you have a soul and you live in a body:
i. 1 Thes.5:23 - May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
ii. Heb.4:12 - “The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
b. Body (Gk: soma, Heb: basar): The material part of you, your flesh and bones.
i. The Body is nothing more than your physical body. It is not the real you. Someday it will die and – you’ll get a new one.
1. It will die (you’ll receive a perfect new one – 1Cor.15:44).
2. Your body allows you to be on earth (James 2:26).
3. Your body is not the real you, your body is to be controlled by the real you (1 Cor.9:27).
c. Soul (Gk: psyche, Heb: nepesh): Mind, thought-life, intellect, emotions, self image, feelings, attitudes, appetites, personality, etc.
i. The Soul is the sum of your mind, thought-life, intellect, emotions, feelings, attitudes, appetites, personality, etc.
1. It won’t die, you won’t receive a new one, it must be transformed.
2. Your soul is not the real you, you’re commanded to control it (Luke 21:19, 2Cor.10:5).
d. Spirit (Gk: pneuma, Heb: ruah): The dynamic force, which constitutes a person. It is the higher part of the immaterial being, the real you.
i. The Spirit is the real you.
ii. Your spirit is dead before knowing Jesus (Eph. 2:5 explain), but is made alive when He comes into your life. At that time your Spirit is also made perfect (Heb.12:23 - Spirits of just men made perfect and Heb.10:14 - For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified).
iii. Because of Him, you are first and foremost a Christian (Phil. 3:9), chosen by Him (Eph. 1:4), set apart for a purpose (Jer. 29:11, Eph. 2:10), called to be His ambassador (2 Cor. 5:20), His child (Jn. 1:12, Rom. 8:15), a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), perfect (Heb. 12:23), righteous (Phil. 3:9), holy (1 Cor. 3:17, Eph. 1:4, 1Peter 1:15-16), victorious (Rom. 8:37) and much more.
iv. Christians need to see their identity how God sees it, and live accordingly. Live your new life based on his work at the cross not your shortcomings and inabilities. Remember: You are a spirit, you have a soul and you live in a body. The spirit is the real you (a new creation, perfect, etc.). The body and soul (emotions, desires, appetites, thoughts) must submit to your spirit in line with His Holy Spirit.
8. lk.9:34 - “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. or whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?”
9. Abraham, david and peter.
a. Rom.4:18-22 states that Abraham, “against all hope, in hope believed…without weakening in his faith…he did not waiver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in faith and gave glory to God being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.”
b. In Gen.12:1-3, 7 and 13:14-17 God promises Abraham that he would be the father of a nation of descendants as numerous as the particles of dust on the earth, yet Abraham at that time was 75 years old and Sarah was baren. Finally in Gen.15:2-3 Abraham lashes out at God in disbelief. God, mercifully, restates the promise in verses 4 through 5 and verse 6 tells us that at that point, “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.” God then continues reminding Abraham of the promise throughout the rest of the chapter. Eleven years after the original promise, Abraham so distrusts God’s word, that he takes matters into his own hands attempting to fulfill God’s promise by committing adultery with Sarah’s servant Hagar, fathering Ishmael, in Genesis 16. God, showing his mercy and kindness to Abraham in spite of his sin, 13 years after the birth of Ishmael, affirms his promise of a son through his wife Sarah, in 17:1 through 16 and Abraham, yet again doubts God even going to the extent of laughing at Him in disbelief in 17:17. God, as he always does, declares His promise again in verses 19 through 21, and still even again in 18:10 and 14. Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah shortly thereafter (Gen.21), when he was about 100 years old and God fulfilled His promise to Abraham but it is obvious that the account in Genesis falls far short of the description of Abraham’s faith told in Romans 4.
c. Remember the context of Rom.4:17, which described God (who inspired every word of Rom.4:18-22) as “the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” That puts it all in perspective.
i. Because Abraham put his faith in God (Gen.15:6) God saw him as righteous (Rom.4:22) and that meant that even those times of unbelief and doubt were covered by God’s grace as God chose to see only his faith and it is for that reason that when God recounts the story from His perspective, through Paul, in Romans 4, He chooses to define Himself first as the God who calls things that are not as though they were and then continues to describe Abraham as righteous, believing and faithful, not because of his record but because he put his faith in God.
d. God looked directly at Abraham’s unbelief and called him believing.
e. God did the same with King David, who committed adultery and murder (2 Sam.11) but God called him a man after His own heart (Acts 13:22).
f. God did the same thing with Peter who contradicted Christ in Mk8:31-33, was idolatrous during the transfiguration in Lk.9:33, and despite vowing to lay down his life for Christ in Jn.13:37, denied Him 3 times in Jn.18:15-27; Peter was likely the most fickle of all the disciples yet God called him a rock (Mt.16:18).
g. Bottom line, when you are faithless, He remains faithful (2 Tim.2:13).
h. God looks at your weaknesses and chooses to see the opposite just like He did with Abraham, David and Peter; He calls those things which are not yet true about you as though they were and
i. He then develops those things in you (2 Cor.3:18). We say that God sees us through His Son, as perfect and Holy because of His sacrifice, and rightly so, but we often fail to truly grasp the reality of that on a daily basis.
j. I love this passage in Romans 4 because it beautifully articulates this encouraging truth.
10. So who am I and why am I who I am? 2 Cor. 5:17
a. God’s son, saved by grace through no merit of my own, created in Him to serve Him daily (Eph.2:8-10).
i. 1 Cor.15:10 - “...by the grace of God I am what I am...”
