Booklet - New Identity
YOUR NEW IDENTITY—”IN CHRIST”! As a believer in Christ and a new creation in Him (2 Cor. 5:17), you are no longer viewed by God as being lost and dead in sin in Adam’s family but now you are spiritually alive and positionally “in Christ” (Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:22; Eph. 2:1-3, 12-13).
YOUR NEW SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS IN CHRIST! Being “in Christ” means that God has also given you all spiritual blessings by virtue of being in His Beloved Son and you are complete in Him (Eph. 1:3; Col. 2:10).
YOUR NEW OPERATING PRINCIPLE TO GRASP—GOD’S GRACE! Now that you have been eternally saved by God’s grace (Eph. 2:8-9), God also wants you to mature by His grace from day to day—to live, grow, serve, become established and strengthened by His grace, since He is the God of all grace (Rom. 5:2; 1 Cor. 15:10; 2 Cor. 12:9; Heb. 13:9; 1 Peter 5:10; 2 Peter 3:18).
YOUR NEW SECURITY—SAVED AND SECURE FOREVER! God wants every one of His children to know that they are unconditionally loved and eternally secure in their family relationship with Him, with no possibility or fear of ever losing their salvation (John 1:12; 3:16, 36; 5:24; 6:35-40; 10:28-30; Rom. 8:28-39).
YOUR NEW PRIMARY MOTIVATION—THE LOVE OF CHRIST! The love that Jesus Christ has for every believer in Him as demonstrated through His sacrificial death for you should now be the greatest motivator to live a life that is pleasing to Him (2 Cor. 5:14-15; Gal. 2:20; Phil. 1:21; 1 John 4:19).
YOUR NEW PERSPECTIVE OF PEOPLE—IN ADAM OR IN CHRIST! As believers, if we allow the Word of God to impact our thinking and perspectives in life, the Lord will transform how we view Him and ourselves, and we will begin to see others as either “in Adam” or “in Christ,” with a burden to see the lost won to Christ (2 Cor. 5:16-17).
YOUR NEW MINISTRY AND PRIVILEGE—AN AMBASSADOR FOR JESUS CHRIST! As a new creation in Christ, all believers have been left here on Earth by the Lord as His ambassadors and have been given the ministry and privilege of sharing the Gospel, God’s message of reconciliation, with all who are lost and still in Adam (John 14:1-3; 2 Cor. 5:18-21; Phil. 3:20-21; 1 Tim. 2:4-6).
YOUR NEW MEANS OF COMMUNICATION WITH GOD— THE WORD OF GOD & BELIEVING PRAYER! As a child of God now in the family of God forever, believers can relate to God and communicate with Him moment by moment throughout each day by means of His Word and prayer (Phil. 4:6-7; Jam. 1:5-6; 1 Peter 2:2; 1 John 5:14-15).
YOUR NEW UNDERSTANDING OF GOD’S PLAN FOR YOU —THE THREE TENSES OF SALVATION! God has already saved in the past every believer in Christ from the penalty of sin (Hell) at justification (Luke 7:50; Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5), and now in the present He wants to save you from sin’s power in your life in the process of practical sanctification (Phil. 2:12-13; 1 Tim. 4:16; Jam. 1:21) as you anticipate with certainty that He will also save you one day in the future from sin’s very presence at glorification (Rom. 5:9-10; 8:30; 13:11).
YOUR NEW OPPORTUNITY—TO GROW SPIRITUALLY! While the Christian life begins with a new birth at the point of salvation from sin’s penalty, God desires all believers to grow in grace and spiritually mature into Christlikeness (2 Cor. 3:18; 1 Peter 1:23–2:3), which involves time, truth, teachers, trials, and trust (Heb. 4:1-2, 9-11; 5:12-14; 11:6; Jam. 1:2-4).
YOUR NEW KEY TO FRUITFULNESS—ABIDING IN CHRIST! The Lord desires to produce spiritual fruit in the lives of all believers, which is accomplished by means of the Holy Spirit rather than legalistic self-effort. As believers abide in yielded dependence upon Christ, our spiritual Vine, He produces His fruit in and through us and we simply bear it (John 15:1-8; Gal. 5:22-23).
YOUR NEW ACCOUNTABILITY—THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST! Though believers are neither saved nor spiritual by means of our good deeds, God desires and plans good works as part of every believer’s life (Eph. 2:8-10; Titus 3:5-8). There is a day coming when each believer will stand before Christ and give an account to Him of how we lived our lives as a new creation in Christ after we were saved (1 Cor. 3:10-15, 9:24-27; 2 Cor. 5:9-10).
YOUR NEW PROVISION FOR WHEN YOU FAIL—CONFESSION OF SIN! When believers sin and fail to walk by faith and do His will, and we all do, God has provided forgiveness and the means of restoration to fellowship with Him via a confession of our sins based on the blood of Christ (1 John 1:3-9).
YOUR NEW WONDERFUL FUTURE IN CHRIST— BLESSED HOPE! Every believer in Christ can look forward to the day that Christ will come to receive us to Himself at the Rapture of the Church prior to the Tribulation, to transform our sinful bodies like His glorious, sinless, immortal body, so that we may be with Him forever in glory (1 Cor. 15:51-52; Phil. 1:21-23; 1 Thess. 4:13-18; Titus 2:11-13)
As you can see from this survey of what God has graciously provided for all believers, your struggle with sin did not take God by surprise. He has provided for you in His grace all that is necessary to have spiritual victory over sin. But how is this possible? The New Testament book of Romans contains three chapters that are one of the most important sections in the entire Word of God for you as a believer to understand how to live the Christian life as God designed it. Romans 6-8 will be something you will need to read over and over again in order to glean and grasp the vital and valuable truth of Christian living by God’s grace-design and provision. In this section, you will learn how to respond by faith to:
the truth of your identification with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection (6:1-5)
the truth of your freedom from the sin nature’s ruling authority in your life (6:6-7)
the truth that you are alive to God in Christ your Lord (6:8-11)
the truth that you no longer need to let the sin nature rule as a king in your life (6:12)
the importance of your daily decisions to present yourself to the Lord to do His will (6:13)
the truth that “you are not under law but under grace” for your progressive sanctification or spiritual growth in time, and not merely for your justification before God (6:14ff)
the truth that the Christian life is not lived by law, performance, sheer willpower, or your own self-effort to conquer the flesh and produce practical righteousness (7:14-25)
the truth that you are not condemned to live a life of practical defeat or bondage to your sin nature because of your position in Christ and His liberating work on the cross (8:1-3)
the truth of the liberating and enabling power of the Holy Spirit in keeping with a walk of faith in Christ as your Life (8:4ff)
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