All Things New: The After Picture
Beartown Road Alliance Church
May 13th, 2007
A few years ago I read an article in one of my youth ministry magazines that was attacking the unrealistic and unattainable view of beauty that fashion magazines had created for young women. It was about a cover photo of Michelle Pfeiffer on Vanity magazine. The read; “What Michelle Pfeiffer needs…Nothing.” The premise was that she was beautiful and needed nothing. A reporter found that this wasn’t really the case when he obtained a receipt for brush up work on the photo. Read what was done: hair added, lines softened, armpit hair removed, etc.
It’s amazing what they can do with pictures today! Michelle Pfeiffer needed a lot of work to look like she did! And all of it was cosmetic, it didn’t change who she was on the inside. This morning we are going to be looking at the way that God changes our pictures. The headline for us would read: “What We Need…Everything! The changes that we are going to be looking at this morning go way beyond any touch up work. They are more than just minor adjustments to make us look better on the outside. God doesn’t gloss over the old picture and tweak a few things here and there. When God makes the changes, the old picture is destroyed and a new one, not even recognizable as the same person, takes its place.
In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul writes these words: If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come! The NLT says: anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. These last three weeks, we’ve been setting the stage for a look at this new person, this new creation. We’ve been ramping up to a picture of who we are in Jesus Christ, the after picture. We spent the first week looking at the before picture. We took a snapshot of humanity, what it is that we really looked like in our humanity. It’s not a pretty picture. It is a picture of dirt and guilt and sin and selfishness, and struggle. This is who we are in ourselves, this is the old. This is the picture that we have to understand so that we can truly appreciate what we’re going to be looking at this morning.
The very next verse in 2 Corinthians 5 begins with these words: All this is from God. The newness of who we become is an act of God alone. It is He who transforms us into a new creation, this is not something that we can accomplish on our own, in any way! So, if we are going to understand this idea of who we are, we have to be convinced in our minds that what God promises to work in us, He is capable of doing. The last two weeks, we have been looking at the character and attributes of God, the things that set Him apart as God and enable us to place our faith and trust in Him. We looked at God’s Sovereignty, we saw that He is All-Powerful, we talked about the fullness of His presence, He exists in all things and in all places at all times! These are the qualities that show us that He is certainly capable of accomplishing this change in us. We also looked at His holiness, His Wisdom, and His love. These are the attributes that ensure us that not only is God capable, powerful enough to change us, but that power is governed by His perfect love and wisdom, He knows what’s best for us and wants what’s best for us. We can trust that in His Sovereignty He is capable of bringing about what He wills and that in His wisdom and love, that will always be what we need to become what He created us to be in the best possible way.
So, we have the before picture, and we have the qualifications of the One who promises to change us. And this morning, we’re going to look at the work that God does in our lives, at the change, but, we need to understand one more thing before we can really look at these changes. This is where I want to begin this morning.
We’ve got to look at the Condition.
I. The Condition
Everything that we look at this morning hinges on one thing. It’s an if/then kind of thing, if we do this, then we God will do this. We use this as parents all the time. If you get good grades, then I’ll let you live, that kind of thing. The one is conditional on the other taking place. When we talk about anything that is conditional, some people get nervous. There may be some here this morning that are thinking, I knew it, here it comes, God wants me to give all my money, God wants me to do this and that, and until I do, He’s going to make my life miserable. That is not the case, in fact the condition is much simpler than many people make it out to be. It does not have anything to do with what we can do, we cannot do enough good in our lives to earn the favor of God and to earn the changes that we’re going to be looking at. It involves only one thing. It is not what you do, it’s what you believe.
The condition is found right in the beginning of the verse. If anyone is in Christ.
Just like sin came to us as a result of a choice, salvation is found in a choice as well. We have to choose to be in Christ. God won’t force Himself on anyone. Those who are in Christ are those who have made the choice to follow Jesus, to identify themselves with Him. Those who are in Christ are those who, by faith, believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He paid the penalty for our sins and that only by believing that He is who He says He is, can we be forgiven and be restored to God and enjoy eternityin heaven with Him. Those who have faith in Jesus Christ for the salvation of their souls are in Christ.
Paul lays it out for us in:
Eph 1:13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.
When we hear and believe the Truth of God’s Word and when we accept God’s gift of salvation and forgiveness, through Jesus, by faith, we are in Christ. That is the condition, faith. When we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, when we surrender our lives to Him, then everything changes. The before picture is immediately destroyed and replaced with another. Here is what happens in our lives at that moment of surrender. Here is who we are in Christ, Here is the change:
II. The Change:
The first thing that happens when we surrender our life to Christ is that we are:
a. Reborn
Most of you have heard the term born again being used to describe a Christian. The term comes from a conversation that Jesus had with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. In the conversation, Jesus tells the man that no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless they are born again. He is not describing a physical birth, but the reality of what happens inside of us upon beginning a relationship with Him. In the life of a Christian, we are born first into sin and death, in our physical birth, in the flesh but when we are in Christ, we are reborn by the His Spirit into life. We literally die to sin and the hold that it had on us and the guilt and penalty of that sin that we bore and are reborn by God’s spirit into freedom and life. We pass from death to life and the promise and hope of eternity.
RO 6:11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
1 Peter 1: 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
Being reborn means that God replaces the old dirty parts with brand new, higher functioning, longer lasting (as in eternal) parts. We’re told we get a new:
i. Heart
Ezekiel 36:26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws
The moment that we accept Christ in our lives, we receive a heart transplant. Gone is the cold heart of stone that is against God. In its place is a heart that beats for Him. Ezekiel also tells us that we get a new:
ii. Spirit
God removes the selfish, sinful spirit, and replaces it with His own. So many Christians never truly grasp this. They live their lives in fear of this and that, they constantly wonder if God still loves them, they have this new spirit but they keep living as though controlled by the old. Listen to this Truth:
2 timothy 1:7 For God did not give us a spirit of timidity(fear, weakness), but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.
That is who you are now! That is the spirit of those who have been reborn. God gives us the authority and the power of His spirit in our lives. Finally, we’re given a new mind as well.
iii. Mind
Romans 8:6 The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; 7 the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.
Our rebirth includes a new mind and mindset. When I visited Haiti for the first time, it radically changed my mindset about life. When I saw things I had never seen before and experienced things that I had never experienced before, it changed me. When we are born again, our eyes are going to be open to so many new things and our minds and mindset are instantly changed.
We are going to view the world differently. We are going to view how we use our time differently. We are definitely going to view other people differently. It’s a whole new way of thinking! Our new minds see everything through the lens of God’s grace and eternity and that has to change our priorities.
When we are in Christ, we are reborn. We are made alive to God through Christ and all things are new! We get a new heart, a new spirit, and a new mind. These are instant internal changes that take place within us. Now, we will still struggle with sin and we will still make mistakes and some of us will still live at times like we have those old parts back, but the reality is that we have been made new, not tweaked or glossed over, but brand spanking new. We are reborn. The old was death, the new picture is life.
At that moment that we surrender our lives to Christ, another thing happens inside, we are:
b. Justified
This is a legal term and it describes our standing before God. When Adam sin, all men were condemned and stood guilty before God as sinners. Justification means that we are no longer guilty before God for our sin. The price and penalty have been paid.
Romans 4:25 He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.RO 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Two things happen here:
i. Forgiven
1JN 2:12 I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
Past sins, current sins, future sins, the work of Jesus on the cross was enough to cover them all. If you think that you have done things that God won’t or can’t forgive, you’re wrong. He won’t miss anything or draw the line at anything!
1 John 1: 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
I broke my wrist a few years ago when I was a youth pastor. It happened just after we had a huge mud fight at a retreat. I got all cleaned up and scrubbed up good and thought that I had gotten all of the mud before they put the cast on my wrist. After a few weeks, my hand just stunk. I washed it and washed it and poured stuff down the cast and it still just smelled terrible. Erin would make me sleep with it hanging over the edge of the bed because it would literally keep her awake! Finally, we found the problem. My wedding ring has a channel on the inside of it, that channel wasn’t noticeable or apparent, but it had gotten filled with mud and started to stink. When we got the ring off and clean, the problem was taken care of.
Some people think that God can only clean the obvious stuff. He can only clean so much but that really bad stuff, that stuff that no one can see, somehow he’ll miss that, he can’t possible clean it up or forgive it. Scripture teaches that He will cleanse you completely; and He gets it clean the first time. Isaiah says we’ll be as white as snow! And not only are all your sins forgiven but it’s like they never happened, we may have to suffer the consequences here on Earth, but we don’t bear the guilt and penalty any longer before God.
RO 8:1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
The moment we confess our sins and ask Christ to come into our life, we are justified before God and all the stain of all our sins is removed. But wait! There’s more! Not only are we forgiven, but we are also:
1. Made Righteous
Because Christ was perfect, because He was sinless, when He died on the cross as a sacrifice for us, and rose again from the grave, those who believe in Him are looked at as perfect now by God. We are declared righteous in His sight.
RO 5:18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
God counts us righteous! This restores our relationship with God that was broken by sin. The verdict changes from guilty to non-guilty, we are justified through faith in Christ.
The old picture is sin and guilt and shame, the new picture is godliness, innocence and righteousness.
The third change that happens when we are in Christ is that we are:
ii. Adopted
Not only does God forgive us and want a relationship with us but He adopts us in to His family as sons and daughters.
John 1:12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—
1JN 3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
The bible tells us that sin made us an enemy of God and God would have been perfectly within His rights to condemn us as enemies and sentence us to death. When King David finally took the throne of Israel, it was found out that Saul, the former King still had a living grandson. Saul had been David’s enemy, Saul had tried to kill him. The custom of the day was to slaughter the family of a former king so that no one would usurp the throne. David could have killed this boy. Instead, he welcomes him in to his home, adopts him as his own, and restores to him all that he would have inherited from his grandfather! That is a picture of what God had done for us. He has gone so far and above what we deserved that He has made us His children.
As His children, we have certain privileges:
1. Access to the Father
Eph 2:18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Scripture says that we can approach the throne of God. The Bible says that we can call Him Abba, father. Abba is the word that was used for Daddy, it’s an intimate word. God isn’t distant and unapproachable, He has given us access to Him and allows us, as His children, to call out to Him as our Daddy, our Abba Father.
2. Heir to the Kingdom
1PE 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you, God has restored us to a position where we will inherit what we were originally created to inherit. We will share in His glory and riches for al eternity as a joint heir with Christ because God has made us His own.
3. Part of a larger Family
I talked with Tim Banks a few weeks ago. He runs and orphanage in Haiti. He said that the most incredible change that he has seen in those orphan girls is the confidence that comes from knowing they have a family, that they are a part of a family. Each is unique and each is finding their place in that family, but they take joy in knowing that they are not alone. As children of the same heavenly father, we are a part of a larger family. We don’t have to be alone. Look around you, these are your brothers and sisters. One change in us is that we are adopted, that immediately means that we are family and that we are called to love each other as family.
Those are some of the many privileges of being God’s children, of being adopted into His family the moment that we believe. The old picture is of an enemy, the new one is of a son or daughter.
There is so much more that we could go into. But these are the changes that I want you see this morning. We are reborn, we are justified, and we are adopted into the family of God.
The last thing I want you to understand this morning is that God changes us for a reason. There is a calling on each of our lives and a responsibility that comes with being made new.
III. The Call
Paul continues in 2 Corinthians 5 to explain what Christ has accomplished for us and how He has made us new and then he says this in verse 20:
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
The word therefore in that verse is huge! It points back to verse 17 and 18 where we are told that if we are in Christ we are a new creature and that this is a work of God. Therefore, because of this, we are Christ’s ambassadors. We become representatives of Jesus Christ and God makes his salvation appeal to others through our lives! You can’t sit back and think that it’s the pastor’s job alone to lead people to Christ. That responsibility belongs to each of us. That will happen when we let those changes that take place on the inside affect the behaviors that people see on the outside.
Gal 5:16-24
This is the new us, this is the change that people will see, the outer evidence of these inner changes! When you see people on diet commercials and they are showing the before and after pictures, the one comment you hear over and over again is this: “I will never go back.” So many Christians give in to the temptation to look more like that before picture and less like what we’ve looked at today. God has changed you, don’t settle again for anything less than what He has created you to be. You are a new creation, and with that comes the responsibility of being a representative of God through Christ.
The condition of the change is faith in Christ, the changes are incredible and undeserved, and the calling is clear: show the world Jesus through the life you live. Don’t go back to the way it was. Remember, the before picture was marked by death, a heart of stone, a sinful spirit, and a worldly mind. We were guilty and dirty before God. We were separated form Him and were His enemies. Now look at the new picture. Look at what God has done for us, look at what he has made us. He hasn’t just smoothed some flaws and airbrushed in a smile, He has shredded the old picture and miraculously created the new. We are blood bought, sanctified, children of God, who are perfect in righteousness, part of a family, and free of guilt and shame. We have a heart of flesh, the spirit of God within us, and our minds have been renewed. We are freed from slavery, and bound for eternal glory with God in heaven. We have been cleansed, justified, reborn, renewed, forgiven, chosen, and pursued and we are heirs to the glory and the power of the Kingdom and the promises of God. That is who you are in Christ Jesus, go out and live like it!
