Do you know that God never asked you to be a Christian in your own power? He does expect you to yield your body to Christ as a living sacrifice (see Romans 12:1) so He can express His perfect love, power, and holiness through you. This is what it means to be identified with Christ.
Read Galatians 2:20. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
Reflect: At our conversion we were given “forgiveness of sin and the gift of eternal life.” What else were we given at that time?
The moment you placed your faith in Christ alone for salvation, God implanted a new nature deep within your being. This new nature, also called the new birth, is the reference point for your identity. But what I also want you to understand is that when God gave you this new nature, through which you are now alive spiritually, He also put to death your old nature. This death occurred on the cross of Jesus Christ, when He died for the sins of the world. This is why your identity as a Christian begins at the cross. A false identity leads to false growth.
Read Romans 6:1-11. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Reflect: Based on Romans 6:1-11, what does it mean to be “dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus”?
Reflect: The above text uses the term “old nature” and “new nature.” In your own words, describe your “old nature” vs. your "new nature."
Christ does not just want to dwell in you. He wants to live in you—to move in and settle down and fully express Himself through your life. Allowing Christ to live out His life through you is the fountainhead of spiritual growth, for only God working in us by the power of the Holy Spirit can produce lasting growth and change in us.
Reflect: Based on what God’s Word says about you (see Galatians 2:20), write down who you are now.
For His Kingdom,
Tony Evans
Prayer: Lord, remind me today that I am a totally forgiven, fully accepted, absolutely loved child of God who is being transformed into the image of Christ. In Christ's name, Amen.
