Freedom in Christ: Session 2 Who am I now?

The following sermon is taken from the Freedom in Christ Discipleship Course by Neil Anderson & Steve Goss.

Last week, I began this series on Freedom in Christ with the question: who are you deep down inside? I want to continue to think about this question today.

The moment you became a Christian was the defining moment of your life. Everything changed for you. The language the Bible uses is very dramatic.

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Can you be partly old creation and partly new?

“For you were once darkness, but now you a light in the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:8)
Can you be both light and darkness?

“He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the son he loves.” (Colossians 1:13)
Can you still be in both kingdoms?

A Saint- Not a Sinner

In Romans 5:8 Paul writes, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This verse seems to imply that we are no longer sinners.

We certainly were sinners, and we were saved by God’s grace. So if we’re no longer a sinner, who or what are we?

In the New Testament, unbelievers are identified as “sinners”. Believers on the other hand are identified as “holy ones” or “righteous ones” or “saints” – and never the other way round. If you have received Jesus as your Lord, you are not a forgiven sinner, but a redeemed saint!

You are a saint! That’s not just a title. It reflects the fact that at the moment you became a Christian – even if you’re not absolutely sure when that moment was – you became a new creation in Christ. Your very nature – who you really are deep down inside – changed to become someone who is accepted, sure and significant in Christ.

In Christ

We are saints because of our new identity and position “in Christ”. In the book of Ephesians alone, in just six chapters we find this phrase “in Christ” no fewer than 40 times. It means that we have a completely new identity –we now share in God’s nature (2 Peter 1:4)

Not Just Forgiven But A Whole New Person

Changed Behaviour Comes from Realising You Are A Whole New Person

Realising that we are a completely new person, brings changes to our behaviour. Very often in our understanding of the gospel we have tended to focus on the fact that Christ died for our sins. But the trouble with that is it leaves us believing that we’re not very different from who we were before. We’re forgiven, but we’re still sinners. But the truth is more wonderful than that.

Last week we saw that we were born spiritually dead because of sin. (SLIDE) Suppose you came across a dead man and you wanted to save him. What would you have to do? Two things:

1. Find a cure for the disease that caused him to die. Paul says: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) In our case the disease was sin. To cure it Jesus went to the cross. He died for our sins.
2. But there’s more. It’s all very well finding a cure for, say, AIDS, but that does not help those who have died of it already. To save them, we need to give them life again. If we finish that verse we see that Jesus not only cured the disease that caused us to die (sin): “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

If we only knew the truth that Jesus died to cure the problem of sin that would make us forgiven sinners. But because we have also received back the life that Adam lost, means we have become saints.

That fact that you and I are saints doesn’t, of course, give us any right to boast – we didn’t earn this, it was a free gift.

Defeat Comes From Not Realising You Are A Whole New Person

Many of us have never fully got hold of the fact that we are forgiven once and for all and that God will never, ever condemn us. He welcomes us into His presence because he loves us.

Some might say:
“You don’t know what’s been done to me.”
It doesn’t change who you are in Christ.

“You don’t know how bad I’ve been.”
It doesn’t change who you are in Christ.

“You don’t know what failures I’ve had as a Christian.”
It doesn’t change who you are in Christ. Christ loved you when you were still a sinner. That hasn’t stopped now that you’re a saint.

Our new identity in Christ is not something we’ve earned. It’s a free gift. It’s by the grace of God alone.

You are not saved by how you behave, but by how you believe.

Being Pleasing to God

What happens when I sin?

The problem we have with seeing ourselves as saints rather than sinners, is that we are painfully aware that we do sometimes sin. We therefore conclude that we must be sinners. The issue is who we are deep down inside and, if you are a Christian, it’s a settled matter. At the very core of your being you now share God’s divine nature. You have become someone completely new.

It’s not inevitable – but we do sometimes go wrong.

Being a saint means that we have the capacity to choose not to sin. Indeed we have ended our relationship with sin because we have died to sin (Romans 6:2) and its power over us.

Being a saint does not mean, however that we are living in a state of sinless perfection. “If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8) We are fooling ourselves if we claim that we never go wrong – the truth is that we are saints who sometimes sin.

We no longer have to live in constant fear of God’s judgement, because Jesus has already dealt with it on the cross. You are not a sinner in the hands of an angry God. You are a saint in the hands of a loving God. He’s called you to come into His presence with your heart sprinkled clean with confidence, with boldness.

Our fundamental relationship with our heavenly Father does not change when we sin

Going wrong changes nothing in terms of our fundamental relationship with God: 1 John 2:1 says “If anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” (1 John 2:1) Your eternal destiny is secure – Jesus has paid the penalty for your sin.

Can anything change the fact that you are your parents’ child? No – nothing you can do can alter your DNA. You can disown your parents, or do all sorts of things that displease them. But whether they are alive or not, nothing can change the fact that you are their child.

When you become a Christian, you become God’s child. In a way you received his DNA – God’s own Spirit lives in you (Romans 8:9) and you now share his very nature (2 Peter 1:4) Nothing can separate you from God’s love (Romans 8:39). No one can snatch you out of His hand (John 10:28).
We restore harmony by turning back to him and away from our sin

But you can disrupt the harmony of that relationship by doing something that does not please God. A harmonious relationship is based on trust and obedience – when either is lacking it affects the quality of the relationship.

So what happens when we do something that we’re ashamed of, that we know is wrong? What is the appropriate thing to do?

We simply need to come to our loving Father, agree with Him that we are wrong (confess) and then turn away from our sin (repent), knowing that it is already forgiven because of Christ’s death.

God does not condemn us

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1) We can always be honest with God because we are already forgiven and there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

God is not a finger wagging, “inspecting” kind of God. We don’t have to earn our way into his good books, we’re already in them because of what Jesus has done. Realising that you can come straight back to God in repentance when you have done wrong and know that you are forgiven is a key to becoming a mature Christian.

We don’t have to try to become what we already are

So now, let’s come to a crucial question: “what can I do to be accepted by God?”

The short answer is: “nothing at all!” The truth is that you are already completely accepted by God simply because what Christ has done.

If we don’t understand the grace of God and our spiritual inheritance we will keep trying to becoming somebody we already are!

It is not what we do that determines who we are. It’s who we are that determines what we do.

The gospel is not about becoming someone different – it starts with recognising that you actually became someone different the moment you received Christ, you are a child of God.

You are already accepted by God! He delights in you. He is the Good Shepherd. He is intimately concerned with every details of your life. Nothing can change that.

He is love – which means that He couldn’t not love you, not matter what you did. Nothing you could do could make God love you more – more love you less. If you had been the only person in the whole history that needed Christ to die, He would have done it just for you. That’s how special you are!

The key to your growth in Christ in your understanding of whom you are now, recognising your status before God.

A lot of confusion in this area comes from not understanding who God is and what He is like, and so as you came into church you will have received a sheet of paper, which I invite you later to read, and take on board the truths of who you are and what God has done for you.