Scripture says:

So then, whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God... (2 Corinthians 5:17,18a)

...giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:13-14)

To see the living God is to be changed forever. To accept a truth given to us by God is to be forever altered by that truth. And the more we go into His Presence to see Him & hear Him, the more awesome the changes in us become. And some day even our very bodies will be transformed, when we see Jesus as He is today at the very throne of God.

But what about the sins we see in our lives? If we stumble, should we just stay down and die? If we sin should we just give up and lose all hope? If we fail the first three times to kick an old habit, should we just go back and live like the dead again?

To be turned back by a stone in our path is to never have had the will to make the journey in the first place. Pick up the stone and toss it out of the way. If it's too big to pick up, walk around it. If it's too wide to go around, then jump over it. If it's too high to jump over then climb over it.

If it's too high to climb over, too wide to go around, and too heavy to remove, then it isn't a stone at all, but a wall or a mountain placed there by the enemy. If it's a wall, then by God's grace, you should walk right through it. If it turns out to be a mountain, then our Lord has already told you what to do. Simply tell it, in the name of Jesus, to take a flying leap. It will be removed.

I remember seeing a slogan circulated by unbelievers that really made me laugh. It said something like, "Christians are not perfect, they just wish they were." You know what? That slogan is funny because it holds some real truth.

Christian believers want so much to be like Jesus. God's Spirit inside us calls us ever closer to the Lord, making us want to be holy and righteous. That's the hunger and thirst for righteousness that Jesus mentions in chapter 5 of Matthew's gospel. We really want to be pure in heart and right in all our thinking.

But we live in a superficial society, and that superficiality has a tendency to rub off on believers. A lesson that many of us could stand to learn is that the clothes do not make the man, the woman, the person. They're just an outer decoration (or possibly even a distraction).

Now look at the spiritual application. Stop and think about how often we believers get bogged down & discouraged by the quagmire of our day-to-day struggles with sin. We see our own foolishness, our failings, our lapsed promises to God and to ourselves. And we may wonder if we'll ever really change.

Such thinking is foolish and yet perfectly normal. The truth, however, is very different. And what is that truth?

This is the truth: if anyone be in Christ, he or she really is a totally new creation. The old heritage and destiny has passed away, and all things have become new. And all things are of God who makes us totally new creations — new creatures — in Jesus Christ. This truth is an eternal reality that can never be altered by anything.

Whoever knows the Lord has been transformed into a child of God, a change of status and identity that remains forever. To know the Lord is to receive His life forever. We cannot again become whatever we were before. It is impossible to see God, and know Him, and then return again to be whatever we were before.

But what about the believer who is still not perfect? What about cigarette habits, lapses into alcohol or drug abuse, bad language, the bad temper, or resorting again to lies and cheating? What about those things? How can we be new and different if we're still the same?

I look in the mirror and I still see my old face. Am I really a new person?  The truth remains: We're not the same. And that fact holds eternal significance.

To be in Christ Jesus is to be a new creation, a new living being — not just a person hopeful of changes that will someday take place. To be in Christ is to be transformed by God Himself.

Not changed by an act of God so much as by the very fact of God. We're not changed by an idea of God that we pick up along the way, but by the Presence and truth of God — the power of God at work in every believer's life.
 

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Isaiah was changed by just seeing God, by the sudden realization of who and what God really is. Seeing God filled Isaiah with awe and the full awareness of his own sinfulness. And God's grace then made Isaiah clean.

Yes, after being transformed within we Christians can still see our sins. In fact, we never really see our sins until God makes big changes in us.  Just like the old song says, "'twas grace that taught my heart to fear..."

God's Presence and grace in our lives reveals to us the things that are not like Him. God's Holy Spirit in believers makes us recognize sin for what it really is.

Religion itself is not enough.  Learning about the ideas that people have about God cannot not change us. Merely reciting creeds or slogans or arguing points of doctrine will not change us.

But to look up and see Jesus — to look into His face and believe — that changes us forever. Remaining with Him in obedient fellowship transforms us from the inside out.

Our daily sins and stupid choices, our pettiness and failures and self-centeredness, all these things are not what we're really about anymore. They're only the old rags of an old life (which was not really life at all, but death). The old ragged clothes are to be put off and thrown away. It's silly to take a bath to get clean and then put on all the dirty clothes you just took off.

But some of us are hoarders. We like to keep our old & ragged clothing. We keep putting the old things into the wash pile, thinking that if we can clean them up some, they'll be just fine. But God urges us to toss all the old ragged clothing — the old lifestyle — into the burn pile instead of the wash pile.  He wants the wonderful new reality that's inside each believer to become visible on the outside, too.

If we belong to Jesus, our heart and spirit have been changed. Why not let the whole world see us as we really are in Christ? It only makes sense to let the real you shine through. Don't let old habits confuse the people around you as to who you are in Christ Jesus.

But never forget one thing: Even when we throw our old rags into the wrong pile, hanging on to them up instead of burning them, we do not change what God has already done. Our foolishness cannot stop or turn back what God has changed inside our very being.

We must never forget that the clothes do not make us what we are. Old habits that may linger for awhile do not make us who we used to be. We may still speak the language of the old country, or prepare and eat foods from a land across the sea, but we're now citizens of a new domain, the kingdom of God's own dear Son. The things that may yet linger are only the outer appearances.

If we know the Lord then our spirit already lives today, safe in Jesus Christ. Whoever trusts in Jesus, whoever knows Him is truly a new creation, a brand new, eternal creature of God.

So why not dress the part?

 

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