Awakening Your 5 Spiritual Senses to God’s Graceنموونە

HEAR the Spirit Bearing Witness!   

I used to read right past Bible verses that talk about being “in Christ.” I took them to be some sort of symbolic terminology. But the phrase “in Christ” helps us understand the spiritual surgery that God performed on us in giving us new life. 

It is by God’s doing that we are in Christ (1 Cor. 1:30). He is the one who transfers us from one realm to another kingdom entirely (Col. 1:13). Picture it. He lowers the crane hook, attaches it to us, and pulls us out of Adam. Then He swings us across a great chasm and places us in Christ. 

As we are placed in Christ, we obtain not only a new future but also a new spiritual past. At one time, we had Adam’s past. We died, because Adam died. We were condemned, because Adam was condemned. But when we become new creations in Jesus Christ, we get a new past—Jesus’s past. We are crucified with Christ. We are buried with Christ. And we are raised with Christ. 

We are no longer the sum total of our past. Instead, we receive a new spiritual past no longer marked by our sins but marked by a radical surgery that took place within us. We had Adam’s spiritual DNA extracted from us and replaced with Christ’s DNA. We inherit Christ’s spiritual characteristics. Yes, right here and right now, we are like Christ in our human spirits: 

By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. (1 John 4:17 NASB) 

We don’t do anything to make ourselves new. Instead, something is done to us. An outside force— God Himself—acts on us and changes us in a way that only He can. In fact, the idea of “change” is not adequate here. God goes further as He exchanges us. In place of our old self, He makes us into a new self. This new self is not some “thing” we possess. It is us! We are literally and actually new at the center of our being. 

Notice that John says we are like Jesus. We are as He is. “Well, sure, when we get to heaven,” we might think. No, read carefully. It says, “In this world.” This means now. We have become partakers of His divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4), and we are His very righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21) right here and now. 

Thank You, Jesus, for making me new. You gave me a new heart and a new spirit, and You placed Your Spirit within me. I am so grateful to belong to You and to be aligned with You. Thank You for making me family. Thank You for showing me how to rest in the righteousness You gave me. I choose to own it and rely on it so that I walk with You in unshakable confidence. I choose to believe that sinful thoughts are not of me but instead war against me. I am now obedient from the heart. Thank You for bearing witness to my radical new identity as a child of the living God, literally and actually born as offspring of Your Spirit. I love You! 

[from “Heaven is Now” by Andrew Farley]