You’re New

I set before you…Jeremiah 21:8

From the beginning life and death has been a matter of choice. Adam and Eve had a choice. They could either eat of the tree of life and live or from the other tree and die. They chose the wrong tree. At Mt. Sinai Israel could choose to obey God and be blessed or not. They chose to disobey. God said, I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live, Deut. 30:19.

Making the wrong choice was not limited to Israel. Men and women around the world more often choose badly. Those who sin are of the devil. He who sins of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning, 1 John 3:8. This can be traced back to the garden where the serpent deceived Eve into making the wrong choice. Because of their choice, sin and death from sin entered the world.

For this reason Paul writes to the churches: And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted yourself in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. Ephesians 2:1-3. We immediately notice the singular personal pronoun, ‘you’. And we notice the past tense verbs. You were made alive. In which you once walked. You were like the others who once conducted yourself in the lust of your flesh, in the desires of the flesh making you children of wrath.

Becoming a child of wrath was the result of bad decisions. Which brings us to verse 4: But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, for by grace you have been saved…

You are no longer who you were. You are now a new creation in Christ Jesus, because you have been saved by grace.