NEW
LIFE IN CHRIST

WHEN you take a shower, you don’t put on the same clothes that you had on before. If you did, you’d be canceling out the benefit of the shower. When you clean the inside, you want the outside to match it. Having a clean inside and a dirty outside cancels the point in being cleansed. When you came to Jesus Christ, God gave you a blood bath.

You were bathed in the blood of Jesus Christ. You were cleansed from all of your sins. But what many of us have done, which wreaks havoc in the community of faith, is having been washed by the blood of Jesus Christ we put on old clothes. The Lord wants us to take off old clothes, as they do not fit with the new cleansing.647

[Christ, Union with; Christian Living, New Life; Flesh; Sin Nature, Residue of]

1 Cor. 5:7; 2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 4:22–24

BEFORE you and I were saved, we were like radios that only had one station. Everything we heard was from the vantage point of the old us. When you come to Christ, a new station has been added to your life. But unless you tune in, you will never hear the music.

Many of us are still feeding from the old station and so we are living the old way even though God has given us a brand-new channel. Unless you tune in, however, you will never hear about the power that you have in Christ. That’s why you don’t hang around people who are only playing old music. If you do, you are going to be … guess what … singing the same old song! What God has done is to give us a new channel once we come to Christ. He wants us to understand that we’ve been united with Him.648

[Christ, Union with; Christian Living, New Life; Sin Nature, Residue of]

Eph. 4:22–24; Heb. 12:1